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A culture warrior at 85

Published by The Nation on Fri, 20 Jul 2018


He comes from a family of warriors and culture champions. His grandfather fought in the Oyo-Ijaye War as Alafins war general. His father was the Asipade of Oyo and a veteran of the First World War. Wande Abimbola, Emeritus Professor of African Languages, former Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, former Senate Leader (1992-93), and Awise Awo Agbaiye (spokesman for Ifa worldwide) chose a different war to lead. He a culture warrior.In the circle of enlightened culture enthusiasts, Professor Wande Abimbola needs no introduction. Here, he is, unarguably, the first among equals. If language and religion are the indispensable foundations of a culture, Abimbola is the foremost intellectual protagonist and defender of indigenous Yoruba culture through the strengthening of Yoruba language and religion. This is his lifes purpose.Of course, since there is no culture without a people, and since people evolve over time, cultures do evolve. This is an obvious dilemma for indigenous culture enthusiasts like Abimbola. Right from their first contact with foreign peoples, including fellow Africans and non-Africans, Yoruba people have confronted foreign ideas, languages, and beliefs. Through these interactions, foreign words entered Yoruba language and were appropriated and indigenized. Most, if not all languages, go through this experience. However, provided the mainframe of the language remains solid, the language is still considered indigenous.Unlike the indigenizing of foreign words into a living language, however, religious belief systems are a different class. First, foreign religions came with their own languages and worldviews, which are often posed as superior to indigenous world views. Therefore, they were expected to replace their indigenous counterparts. Second, while indigenous religions are non-proselytizing, foreign religions are, and the duty to evangelize is integral to a voluntary embrace of those religions. Third, those foreign religions also came with additional benefits, including education, commonly presented as requiring a new orientation and a new worldview.For these reasons, many Yoruba, like their fellow Africans across the continent, embraced those foreign belief systems, including Islam and Christianity, with their cultural ethos and the imperatives they impose on adherents, including proselytisation. The few who resisted were described as infidels bound for hell fire. Interestingly, the violence experienced by Africans in the arena of religion has been caused by conflicts between the proselytizing religions and rarely between either of them and indigenous religions. Consider Boko Harams war against Western education and Christianity.Wande Abimbola sees his mission as the preservation and promotion of Yoruba culture by promoting its language and indigenous religious system; albeit not at the expense of foreign religions. Indeed, he is the first to insist that indigenous religion is not designed to recruit adherents.By its nature, indigenous religion welcomes devotees; but it doesnt have a mandate for evangelization. Neither does it ridicule adherents of other religions. Therefore, Abimbola expects reciprocity of the live-and-let-live philosophy of indigenous religions from other religions. When this expectation is unmet, which is often the case, there is crisis.Abimbola once found himself in such a crisis and he confronted it by fighting back on the spot. He attended a special church service at the invitation of a celebrant. The officiating clergy, considering it his spiritual obligation to offer salvation to unbelievers, issued a stern warning that whoever did not believe in Jesus, especially an Ifa worshipper, was bound for hell fire. It was an in-your-face confrontation. Abimbola responded in kind as the man of God spoke. He declared to the hearing of everyone there that he would not go to hell. And he asked the man of God if his ancestors who were also Ifa worshippers were in hell. After service, the man of God apologized to him.Abimbolas position on indigenous language is just as strong as his view on indigenous religion. But as in the latter, the challenge of protecting and promoting indigenous language is real and huge. Western education travelled to Africa with Western languagesEnglish, French, Portuguese, etc. And as missionaries despised indigenous religions, western educators were contemptuous of indigenous languages. Children were forbidden from speaking the mother tongue in school.The consequence is enormous. Research shows that mother tongue is the best means to effective learning. The Chinese and Japanese excel in mathematics and the sciences in part because in their formative years, they were introduced to these subjects in their mother tongues. Deprived of this effective avenue to learning, rote learning, with all its deficiencies, has been the norm in African school systems. Furthermore, children could acquire multiple languages and use them effectively in their learning process. Many African children were deprived of this opportunity because of the insistence of their western educators on the use of the language of the colonial powers.Apparently, the colonizers succeeded beyond their expectation because the policy worked beyond the colonial days. Even now, many Yoruba households would have nothing to do with Yoruba language, forbidding their children, including toddlers, from speaking the language. These children grow up with no understanding of their mother tongue. But they also have little understanding of the English language. And but for the recent policy declaration of one of the states, governments are also complicit in this charade. Like many scholars, Abimbola is worried about this trend. For if it is not broken, we may just bid indigenous Yoruba culture goodbye.Abimbola is one of the rare scholars who doesnt just offer theories for the solution of problems. He is also actively in the business of finding practical solutions to identified problems. In the matter of indigenous religion, he is a practicing Ifa priest, and he engages in active research on Ifa divination systems. As an oral system, one major drawback for scholars interested in Ifa research is the non-availability of written texts. From his student days when Abimbola took up the challenge, he has never looked back nor digressed. He has published multiple volumes of Ifa divination poetry, which have provided scholars with a wealth of materials, thus facilitating productive research into Ifa as a religion and as a discipline.Abimbola is not only a professor of African Literature focusing on Ifa divination, he is also an Ifa priest. And more than an ordinary priest, he is the Awise Awo Agbaiye, the spokesman of Ifa divination in the world, having been so installed by priests from West Africa, the home of Ifa divination in 1981 in the palace of the Oni of Ife. As Awise, Professor Abimbola travels the world projecting Ifa divination and attending to the needs of adherents and devotees.In addition, noting the decline in the use of Yoruba language, Abimbola has established an Institute of Yoruba Language and Religion in Oyo where students from all over the world study Yoruba language and Ifa divination. His children, with their various career successes, are also very well in the tradition as Babalawos and Iyanifas in their own right.I have benefitted immensely from Abimbolas wealth of knowledge in Yoruba culture, language and tradition. As a young lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo University, I studied at his feet before and after he was appointed the Vice Chancellor. It was always a delightful experience to visit him, first in his Road 9 house, and later in the Vice Chancellors Lodge. I always had a notebook in my car such that as soon as I left him, I would jot down my newly acquired idioms and proverbs before I forgot.Babalawos memorize without writing. So, Abimbola now prefers oral delivery to writing, which, he argues, does not aid memory. In October 2013, he addressed Howard University Freshman Seminar Class on Yoruba tradition in Africa and the Americas. He spoke for one hour without reference to notes, explaining that he now prefers the title onsowe (speaker of books) to onkowe (writer of books).Former students, colleagues, family, and fellow priests and priestesses gathered in Atlanta, Georgia on July 7 to honor Awise Awo Agbaye on the 85th anniversary of a purposeful life. I was not there because the will of the spirit was overruled by the state of a newly panel-beaten body frame. Lase Olodumare, 90th is around the corner.Igba odun, odun kan.The post A culture warrior at 85 appeared first on The Nation Nigeria.
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