Prof Wande Abimbola is an erudite scholar who needs no introduction. He has taught at Havard and Boston Universities and a former Vice-Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He is an alumnus of the former University College Ibadan, now University of Ibadan and the University of Lagos, Unilag. Here, he shares a few secrets about himself, enjoy.
“I was admitted to the University College, Ibadan, now the University of Ibadan, in 1959. I was a state scholar. At that time, the best students in each faculty enjoyed full scholarship. They would also pay a stipend to your parents and three children. That was in the colonial times. I studied History.
“One of my classmates was Prof Oloruntimeyin. Before my final examinations, there was an advertisement for the employment of a junior research fellow in Yoruba Studies at the university. Yoruba as a course was not available at the time. When Oloruntimeyin saw the advert, he advised me to go for it and I was selected.
“One of the criteria for the appointment was a Master’s degree certificate in either divinity, anthropology, English or literature. I was not qualified in any way. A week before the interview, the director of the Institute of African Studies, the late Prof R.G Armstrong, dropped a note in my pigeon hole at Melamby Hall. He wanted to see me. When I got there, he said that he saw my application and asked why I applied when I did not even have a first degree.
“After more than one hour of discussion, he was impressed with me and said he would short-list me. There were 11 people who had a Master’s degree that were invited. I was called in first. When I discovered that the interviewers did not know anything about the subject, the session became a lecture and I lectured them. Four days later, I got a letter of appointment and a note for me to choose an accommodation among the houses available on the campus. That was how I became a junior research fellow in Yoruba Studies even before I wrote my final first-degree examination.
“I occupied the position for more than two years. While doing it, I started wondering why there was no degree programme in Yoruba. There was a friend who had scholarship to study Linguistics in Birmingham. We discussed the issue when he arrived back in Nigeria and we decided to start a degree programme in Yoruba. But before that, I had to travel to the US to do my Master’s degree in Linguistics. My plan was to return to Ibadan to start the Yoruba programme but on my return, I went to the University of Lagos. I met Dr Adeboye Babalola and another person there and we started a degree programme in Yoruba.
“I later did my doctorate degree on Ifa. There were just three of us that bagged the certificate in 1970 at UNILAG and it was the first time the school would offer doctorate degree. The three of us did different programmes.”
HOW HIS PARENTS INFLUENCED HIS CHOICE OF RELIGION
“The influence of my parents looms large in my life. I was born into a traditional family. My late father was the Asipade of Oyo land. He was the leader of the Ogun community. He was a veteran of the First World War, fighting alongside the allied army that captured Cameroon from Germany.
“My grandfather was also a soldier that fought in the Ijaye War of 1858 to 1862. He was the leader of the Alaafin of Oyo army. He fought alongside Basorun Ogunmola, and Ibikunle, who was Ogunmola’s superior.
“My mother was a Sango worshipper and she taught me how to chant Ijala and Ogun songs. She could render the chants of 15 Orisas (deities). In those days, people were educated in traditional matters through interaction with parents. My mother could remember details of what happened 90 years ago.
“Before I went to school, my father enlisted me as an apprentice with the famous Oluwo of Akeetan called Fadairo. I studied Ifa there for eight years before I went to school.”
HOW HE RELATED WITH PUPILS WHO WERE EITHER CHRISTIANS OR MUSLIMS
“In the whole of Oyo town at the time, there were just five churches and the faithfuls were not fanatics, so we related well. The Muslims were even far fewer. Indigenous religion was widely practised.
“The free primary education that the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo started in the 1950s propagated foreign religion in Yoruba land. Our minds were changed to look down on our own culture as evil and invalid. They called traditional worshippers candidates of hell. It was propaganda that killed our traditional religions.
“They found a way to convert the children who also went back home to convince their parents. Some children told their parents that if they refused to convert to Christianity, they would not give them befitting burial when they died. So many parents converted to Christianity.
“It is not a mistake for people to practise a way of life different from the one practised where they were born. The problem comes when you reach a stage and throw away your original way of life. It is not a problem if someone travels to Mecca and returns with the Arab traditional cap. The problem comes when he decides to burn his traditional clothes because they are no longer good for him. That means the man is insane. We have taken foreign religion to a level of insanity.
“The decay we are seeing everywhere in Nigeria is the result of the large scale abandonment of the traditional ways of our fathers and mothers. We have condemned our way of life and embraced the foreign culture. You can be a Christian or Muslim and still see some values in the way of life of our forefathers. Today, parents give their children Mary, Michael, Rasheed or Isiaka. Where are our own names? That kind of life is ruining our culture and our view of the universe in which we live. It leads to hopelessness.”
Source: Punch
