Leke Salaudeen
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and a Nigerian scholar based in the United States of America (USA) Professor Toyin Falola have called for the promotion of Yoruba language and culture within and outside the country.
Both of them spoke in Lagos Tuesday at the 40th Memorial Anniversary Lecture of the late Chief Isaac Delano and presentation of the books written by him. The books are Cultural Modernity in a Colonised World; Dictionary of Yoruba Monosyllabic Verbs and the Yoruba Language
Obasanjo, who was the chairman of the event, regretted that the present generation is not keeping the culture as they should. According to him, culture is the totality of the life of a group of people. “Whenever I travel abroad, I dress as an African to let the white appreciate our culture. We should promote our culture through our mode of dressing and speak our mother tongue,” he said.
The former president also fumed over the scrapping of history as a subject in the school syllabus. “If we don’t teach history in school how will our children learn from the past? History makes us understand the present and guide us against our future,” he added.
Falola, the guest lecturer, advocated the use of Yoruba language as a medium of instruction and learning in the elementary schools in the Southwest. He recalled that the late Professor Babs Fafunwa and Delano mulled over the idea of promoting indigenous language as a medium of learning in the old Western Region.
He said: “Their position was based on the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO’s) findings that children learn better when they are instructed in classes by their indigenous language. The project which was supposed to focus on primary school pupils were tagged the Ife –Year Primary Project.
“Expectedly, the adoption of Yoruba for the purpose of teaching all subjects – including mathematics and other science-related subjects – was meant to be daunting. However, with the vast spread of indigenous scholars in each of the fields covered by the subjects, the challenge of finding adequately equipped personnel to produce the needed books, training of teachers and other technicalities did not suffice. Among these experts was Delano, who was at the time a colossus in the Nigerian society of linguists and literary writers.”
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Falola said the purpose of the project and the agenda of the Western Region government under the defunct Action Group were very much similar. He said: “Although the Action Group did not advocate for the adoption of Yoruba as the language of instruction in schools in the region, its vision of what education should look like and its impact on the society was in sync with that of the project organizers.”
He said curricula were designed to include vocational aptitudes in which schools were to partner with worthy artisans in the society, whose workshops would be visited periodically by pupils for practical knowledge of what they might have been taught in class by their teachers, and on some occasions, by the artisan themselves.
To achieve maximum success of the programme, he said the organisers agreed that the central theme of teaching should be education through fascination, that is, liberalising knowledge so as to make learning in Yoruba language appealing.
Falola pleaded with parents, institutions, and governments to allow the use of Yoruba language as a medium of teaching and learning. He said Afrikaans in South Africa used their language and the Israelis adopt Hebrew for teaching and learning in elementary schools in their countries.
Dignitaries present at the occasion include the chief launcher Chief Bode Akindele who was represented by Archbishop Kehinde Stephen; former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Chief Emeka Anyaoku; Chief Folake Solanke (SAN), Prof Banji Akintoye, Delano’s children and grandchildren.
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