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Ti Oluwa Ni Ile (2) By Pius Adesanmi

October 7, 2011

(Lecture delivered at the annual public lecture series of Afenifere Renewal Group USA Chapter, Detroit, Michigan. September 24, 2011)

(Lecture delivered at the annual public lecture series of Afenifere Renewal Group USA Chapter, Detroit, Michigan. September 24, 2011)

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(Continued from last week)

Awolowo is, of course, not alone. Like every other ethnic nationality in Nigeria and, indeed, like all peoples, the Yoruba have an infinite number of heroes and heroines whose personal examples are also deployable and serviceable at various levels of remove from the Awo script. In no particular order of significance, I could very easily have cited Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Kudirat Abiola, Ayodele Awojobi, Tai Solarin, Adekunle Ajasin, Bisi Onabanjo, Olikoye Ransome Kuti, and Abraham Adesanya to create a topography of useable omoluabi narratives. What is important for me here is that these iconic figures have all given us the gift of the stories of their lives that could be deployed as a transcendental template of omoluabi for current and future generations of Yoruba children. What has the Yoruba nation done with that gift? Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. I have been in North American classrooms for more than a decade now, having taught first at Penn State University here in America and, now, at Carleton University in Canada. Location as a teacher in North American classrooms confers the special privilege of firsthand encounters with kids from especially two fragments of Nigerian society: the arriviste upper middle class that my friend, Tope Fasua, loves to describe as the “Murano to Mikano generation” because they drive their Murano jeeps home from work only to turn on their Mikano generators; and the super-rich class which comprises mostly you know who. In essence, from the upper middleclass to the super rich, Yoruba parents have been sending Yoruba children from Yoruba land to my classrooms in the United States and Canada for a very long time. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. They come younger and younger every year: Eighteen years-old, seventeen years-old: just past the critical core of their formative years. The years during which stories of those who were propelled to the moon and other lofty heights by iwapele and omoluabi were drilled into my psyche and cultural personhood and transformed into the stuff that my dreams for the future were made of. Like the poet persona in Birago Diop’s beautiful poem, “Viaticum”, you know that every family, every nation, owes it to the younger generation to equip them with cultural bases and narratives before they go forth “beyond the seas and further still/beyond the seas and further, further still, beyond the sea and beyond the place beyond”. No nation has any business sending out her children to meet the world with zero or befuddled knowledge of who they are, of their cultural selves. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. But you interact today with kids sent forth from the Yoruba nation by Yoruba parents to come and continue their education under your watch in North America. And you try to determine whether they possess the cultural core upon which to build the cosmopolitan ethos of our times. For no people has ever made progress by abandoning their own stories. You acquire other stories in order to empower, enrich, and retool your own foundational stories. You do not abandon them. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. And kids from Yoruba land have never heard of Obafemi Awolowo. You try another approach and ask casually about Ayodele Awojobi. No? Okay, what about Tai Solarin? No? Okay o, what about Adeniran Ogunsanya? No? Okay, what about Simeon Adebo? No? Atanda Fatai Williams nko? No.

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By now, despair sets in. You are afraid to ask about Gani Fawehinmi. It would hurt too much to see a first year Yoruba undergraduate scratch his or her head for vague memories of Gani Fawehinmi who died just yesterday. You want to give up but you decide to give it one last shot. Okay, what about Bola Ige? Here you strike gold. Finally! The answer comes: “Ah, I know him sir. Is it not that man that they said that they killed?” You know you have to be thankful and make do with that answer. You don’t want to push it. At any rate, your interlocutor is already tweeting on his iphone or blackberry, the unmistakable signal that your time is up: “it’s been nice meeting you sir. I’ve been hearing about the things you write for Sahara Reporters. I may take a class with you next semester.” Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. This is how you sit down in your office in far away Canada and gauge the temperature of Yoruba land and determine that she is suffering from acute malaria. For how does one explain that kids go to primary school in Osogbo, Akure, Ondo, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ado Ekiti; and secondary school in Lagos, Ogbomoso, Ikare, Ijebu Ode, Owo, Ilaro, Ikenne, and arrive in American and Canadian classrooms at seventeen or eighteen without ever having heard the singular or collective stories of the heroes and heroines whose lives and service to humanity best exemplify the critical core of their cultural being? And note that we are talking about contemporaneous heroes here, not ancient or mythical heroes. It tells me that something is fundamentally broken in the primary and secondary classrooms of Yoruba land, the source from which those culturally denuded kids are unleashed on North American classrooms. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. Do I need to state the fact that if we are raising Yoruba children who no longer know the story, the earth and the fullness thereof cannot be theirs? You cannot possess the earth based on other people’s stories. Those who colonized us knew that much: that is why they insisted we adopt their own stories and proceeded to try to destroy our stories. It is not for nothing that the French made Leopold Sedar Senghor and his contemporaries throw away the stories of Askia the Great, Mansa Kankan Musa, Lat Dior, and embrace stories of “our ancestors the Gauls”. The French knew what they were doing. They knew the importance of stories for their policy of assimilation was really about replacing African stories with foundational stories of French racial and cultural superiority. And the English who taught you a load of bullshit about the “discoveries” of Mungo Park, Livingstone, Stanley, and the rest knew what they were doing too. Despite the gigantic project of historical redress that is Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, the venerable Chinua Achebe is still struggling for the restoration of the story of his people. He calls for a balance of stories, a democracy of stories, in his book, Home and Exile. In the Yoruba case, how do you struggle for a balance of stories when your children are now strangers to your own stories? Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. If you want to assess the gravity of the situation in Yoruba land, you need to go to on a familiarization tour of Yorubascape on Facebook and check out what Yoruba kids are doing to nice omoluabi Yoruba names. It is pure horror. I opined in a previous public lecture that we shall soon arrive at a situation where Yoruba parents would encounter their kids online and not know who they are because of the strange new orthographies that those kids are inventing for Yoruba names in order to be hip. I have not noticed this trend among Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Ijaw, Igbirra or Itshekiri kids. Even here in the West, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese kids struggle to spell their names in their respective native orthographies. That is why some government official forms allow them to do that. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re! Chinua Achebe warns us that the psychology of the dispossessed is frightening. The psychology of the dispossessed! That is what is on display when Yoruba kids arrive here straight from Yoruba land and Olorunfemi becomes Horlawrunphemmy; Funmilayo becomes Phunmeelayor; Fatosa becomes Phatohsa; Oladele becomes Horlardaylay; Demilade becomes Daymilahday. Anuoluwapo, Iretiolu, Bukola, Motunrayo and so many other nice Yoruba names are all victims of this identity Boko Haram that is spreading like wild fire in the harmattan among Yoruba kids online. Sometimes I am even happy that the kids do not know Fatai Williams or Obafemi Awolowo because I don’t want them to go and rejoice on Facebook that they just heard about two old school lapel Yoruba Chiefs called Phatayi Wheeleeams and Kingphemmy Ahwolorwhaw. Remember that one of the key attributes of omoluabi is opolo pipe (intelligence). Does the cultural violence being done to the Yoruba self on Facebook translate to opolo pipe? Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re! But it would be erroneous to blame these kids. They are symptoms of a much deeper malaise that goes way beyond them. They are products of a Yoruba nation that has lost the idea of the personal example. Imagery of aspiration to the moon in order to be like Awo or of aspiration to the top in order to master the art of rhetoric and eloquence like the Cicero of Esa Oke has been replaced with imagery of the dock: Chief Bode George in the dock, desecrating aso ebi in the process, Dimeji Bankole in the dock, and lately, Asiwaju siwaju-ing all the way to the dock. So, don’t blame the youths like Orits Wiliki said in that reggae song. Don’t blame them if they ask you which examples, which iconic narratives of omoluabi you have given them in replacement of the inspirational stories of Awo and his contemporaries. With what have you filled the void left behind by the great heroes and heroines of 20th century Yoruba nation in terms of public moral and ethical capital? Or do you expect these kids to draw inspiration from your agbadas billowing in the dock? Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. I have followed developments in the southwest carefully since that part of Nigeria was thankfully taken back from the vicious vultures in the contemptible PDP. The new governors have been saying the right things. They have been articulating ideas of economic regeneration underpinned by a deep social concern and vistas of Awoism but I am not exactly sure that they understand where the renaissance they talk about ought to begin. Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, for instance, likes to remind us all that his state answers the name, ipinle omoluabi. Trouble is, like every other state in Nigeria, the fragment of the population that will determine the success or lack thereof of his vision is thirty-five years old and below.

That is the critical demographic that has been unmoored from culture and has been hardest hit by the loss of the power and the appeal of the personal example in Yoruba land. So, Ogbeni Aregbesola must be reminded that he cannot be boasting about his “ipinle omoluabi” when the most critical demographic of his state is out on Facebook or twitter saying that they are Phorlaryhemmie from Hawshun or Horshun state. Let Ogbeni Aregbesola come and tell me about omoluabi only after he has inspired his young citizens to spell Osun state correctly. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. The new governors of the southwest need to declare a state of emergency in education and culture. There ought to be a pan-Yoruba education summit that would come out with a blue print, a roadmap to cultural renaissance via education in Yoruba land. Governor Kayode Fayemi recently ran into trouble with Yoruba youth online for attempting to rename the state University. Although, some pointed out – and I agree with them – that renaming a University is a misplaced priority, others were not happy that he was going to change the name to Ekiti State University and end up with the acronym, ESU. How can a University be named after Satan, after the devil? Obviously, those kids who were up in arms against the governor do not know the story. They do not know how Esu’s good name came to be ruined on his way into the Christian Bible. They do not know that Esu of Yoruba mythology is not the Christian Satan or devil. They do not know. Governor Fayemi ended up with EKSU to appease the powers and principalities of cultural ignorance. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. A pan-Yoruba education summit should adopt the myth of Atunda as its operational theme. I am sure you all know the story of Atunda in Yoruba mythology: the servant of the Orisa Nla who rebelled against slavery and servitude, rolled a boulder over his slave master, and broke him to pieces. The shattered god became multiple gods and deities in a cosmological process of renewal. By opening his eyes and looking within, Atunda answered Bob Marley’s question: are you satisfied with the life you are living? Atunda was not satisfied with the life he was living, he was not satisfied with his situation, hence his foundational rebellion. This explains why Wole Soyinka and Funso Aiyejina have argued that in Atunda the Yoruba gave the world the first revolutionary, the first iconoclast, the first progressive agitator, the first subject in history who resisted and rejected oppression, the first agent of change and rebirth. Aiyejina even considers Atunda the predecessor of Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey, Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, and Eduardo Mondlane. Atunda snatched order from the jaws of primordial chaos. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. We should be able to think up an educational system that would revamp our culture and histories, regenerate them, and feed them into the arteries of the postmodern condition like the Asians have done. Until that cultural foundation is rebuilt, the Yoruba governors who are talking about good governance and economic recovery in Oodua are wasting our time. Those things cannot happen outside of a cultural rebirth that will reposition our stories through an educational roadmap. This would imply, among other things,  conceptualizing actions that would meet Yoruba youth – the future of the race – where they are. Those kids are on Facebook and twitter; they on Naijapals and Nairaland. They ain’t coming back because they’ve got to move with the times. That is where we have to go and meet them. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. And while we do this, we need to invent new omoluabi narratives to replace the imagery of the dock. You will observe that I called Odumakin, Sowore, and Famakinwa leaders at the beginning of this lecture. That is evidence on the one hand of my belief that new role models with deployable and uplifting personal examples must emerge and my unwillingness to recognize the current rulers of Nigeria as leaders on the other hand. Beyond the tragic generational disappointment that are the Dimeji Bankoles and the Femi Fani-Kayodes of this world, we have to consecrate new leaders whose stories are already personal examples unfolding, new leaders whose service can become a new public symbology of omoluabi. Our generation cannot afford to give those coming behind us a legacy of the dock. Sowore, for instance, is a powerful personal example unfolding before us but how many of our primary and secondary school students know him, let alone aspiring to follow his example? We have to map out strategies for putting these examples out there for our youth to plug into. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. And there is no shortage of impressive generational foot soldiers who are already answering the call of the Atunda dynamic in so many little ways. I meet them. I meet them every day in kilobytes of Facebook and gigabytes of twitter. I meet them: Kayode Ogundamisi, Mallami Kayode, Tunji Ariyomo, Jagunmolu Oluwadare Lasisi, Tope Fasua, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, Adepoju Paul Olusegun. There are hundreds of thousands more where that came from. A restless run of talents who are already in the battle for renaissance in their own little ways. These folks and many more like them that I meet daily remind me of everything that I know about omoluabi. This is the pool that must feed the vision of the Odumakins and the Sowores of this world; this is the farm that must be cultivated first by the vibrant new governors of the southwest before they disturb us with talk of economic development. Or have they not heard that the patriarch who raises a house (economics) but does not raise his children (culture) will see the house sold off by the children he did not raise properly? Only when we get the cultural bases right shall the earth and the fullness thereof be ours! Mo wi re abi mi o wi re?

(Concluded)

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