Adapting Yorùbá Epistemology in Educational Theory and Practice in Nigeria

What is the value of Yoruba epistemology, theory of knowledge, particularly its philosophy of perception, to humanity in general, and to contemporary Nigeria, in particular? How does Yorùbá epistemology connect with educational theory and practice in Nigeria? This essay recognizes but goes beyond the more general overviews on classical Yoruba education and its contemporary significance represented in works of Yorùbá and Africanist scholars. I demonstrate the significance of Yoruba philosophy of education beyond its cultural context, by projecting its universal and timeless value, foregrounding its distinctive concepts in dialogue with ideas from other cultures. In its engagement with Nigerian educational dynamics, the essay concentrates, first, on Yoruba epistemology in its intersection with ethical and metaphysical perspectives from Yoruba thought. Second, the essay deploys the African art-centered investigations of the role of the senses in relating with art, understood as paradigmatic of navigating the world.

Disability and Human Diversity: A Reinterpretation of Ẹni-òòṣà1 Philosophy in Yorùbá Belief

As an exercise in African philosophy, this paper examines and demonstrates the limitations of the two popular extremes in disability studies, namely, the medical and social models of disability. While the former is essentialist in rendering disability as a fixed condition and as an individual problem to be confronted with medical intervention, the latter identifies it as a social problem that requires social intervention. The paper employs the methods of hermeneutics, critical and conceptual analyses to facilitate an understanding that, within the context of Yorùbá belief, disability goes beyond the realm of human beings and involves the active participation of Yorùbá deities, especially Òrìṣà-ńlá or Ọbàtálá. Consequently, it questions the assumptions associated with the recognition of the dichotomy between “normality” and “abnormality” and confronts the mystical and/or mythographic representation of ẹni-òòṣà or persons with disabilities with a view to offering new insights into how persons with disabilities ought to be conceptualized in order to promote their inherent human dignity.

Contemporary Nigeria and the Deficit of Deliberative Democracy: Exploring the Indigenous Value of Àgbájọ ọwọ́ as Collegiality

The paper advances three groups of interrelated claims. First, a fundamental deficit of democratic practice in contemporary Nigeria is that electoral choices/candidates are largely disconnected from the spirit of vibrant deliberation/consideration by the Nigerian demos. Second, candidates that emerge tend to be more parochially disposed to serving the interests of the political sponsors, rather than working towards the promotion of the common good. Third, to address the problem of the research, it is argued that well-meaning, democratically conscious Nigerians should practically embrace the indigenous value of àgbájọ ọwọ́as collegiality to resist electoral choices/candidates of the noted politically influential elites. As one of the socio-moral values of an ideal Yoruba persona, or ọmọlúwàbí, àgbájọ ọwọ́ underscores the critical point that the realty of the common good properly derives from a rational collaboration of the members of a political collectivity. Ultimately, this understanding of collegiality helps in the promotion of deliberative democracy and its benefits in Nigeria.

Ọmọ Tí A Kò Kọ́: Globalization and Cultural Education among New Generation Nigerian Yorùbá

This essay critically explores the semantic, phonological and philosophical implications of the sound “kọ” (build) in the Yorùbá proverb ́ Ọmọ tí a kò kọ́ ni yóò gbé ilé tí a kọ́ tà (the child that is not taught will eventually sell the house that is built). I will read the concept behind the sound as a multi-layered, multi-semantic meta-philosophical building block which not only showcases a serious aspect of indigenous epistemology and serving as a note of caution on Yorùbá education and its sociology of filial responsibilities, but could also be deployed to interrogate the emerging youth culture of the new generation Nigerian Yorùbá in the age of globalization. The essay draws on the semantic and philosophical content of kọ́ to articulate the argument that investments on material possession are counterproductive and antithetic to investment on human capital, the epitome of which is investing on one’s child/ ren. The essay concludes that the spirituality and permanency of the kọ of the ́ child’s mind is diagonally opposed to the superficiality and transience of the kọ́ of the building, a mere structure with limited value.

The Interface Between the Written and the Oral in lfa Corpus

While the modernists in the field of African philosophy embrace writing as a precondition for philosophy and forcefully maintain the need to cast philoso­phy in the image of science, the traditionalists insist that African philosophy is essentially a philosophical reflection on African oral traditions, morals, and re­ligious practices. This essay argues that the intransigent relationship between the modernists and the traditionalists persists because the two dominant schools have failed to recognize the need to furnish a paradigm of interaction between their projects. From the standpoint of lfa, therefore, this paper rejects the written-oral dichotomy that is central to both the modernist and the tradi­tionalist orientations, occasioned by their parochial and provincial conceptions of philosophy respectively. The paper shows how lfa as a complete philosophy puts a premium on the need to bring individual views in oral and written cul­tures together to enhance a wider human vision in matters bordering on the intellectual configuration of our human society.

Ìwà l’ẹwà: Towards a Yorùbá Feminist Ethics

This paper explores a narrative path towards foregrounding what it calls a gender-relative morality as a core dimension of female subordination. It takes a feminist approach to ethics, which stresses specifically the political enterprise of eradicating systems and structures of male domination and female subordination in both the public and the private domains. The theoretical implications of Feminist narrative ethics is then applied to the philosophical imports of Yorùbá proverbs about women as a way to tease out how female subordination is grounded in Yorùbá ontology and ethics. Spe[1]cifically, the essay interrogates the ethical and aesthetical trajectory that leads from ìwà l’ẹwà (character is beauty), a Yoruba moral dictum, to ìwà l’ẹwà obìnrin ([good moral] character is a woman’s beauty). Within this transition, there is the possibility that the woman is excluded from the category of those properly referred to as ọmọlúwàbí.

Yorùbá Values and the Environment

This essay deploys Yorùbá ontology, epistemology and axiology to construct a Yorùbá ecological philosophy, or ecosophy. It argues that in contrast with the Judeo-Christian tradition of environmental anthropomorphic domination as the destiny of humanity or American pragmatism which encourages no stable traditions of values but what conduces to desired ends, the Yorùbá value system is by far more advanced in being more eco-respecting, eco-friendly and geared toward sustainable human habitation in a world in which he/she constitutes one small fraction of sentience. The essay developed around the responses to the following questions: a) What are values? b) How are values derived? c) Are there Yorùbá values? d) What is the environment? e) How are concepts of the environment derived? f) What is the relationship between values and the environment? g) What is the relationship between Yorùbá values and the environment? h) What are the inferences these have for one-health approach to the environment and sustainable human global co-existence?

Ikere-Ekiti in Art and Cultural Narratives

Ikere, a city in Ekiti State of southwestern Nigeria, comes up often in the literature of art history on two principal accounts: first, its art and architecture, and second, its major annual fesitval. These are the two central concerns of this paper. In the first part, the unique architecture of the afin and the traditional sculptures that were its central feature present the opportunity to examine the interconnectedness of continuity and change, tradition and modernity, and the centrality of art in the Oba's quest for political pre-eminence. Ikere came to in­ternational attention through the vlrtuoslc sculptures of one of Africa's master carvers--Olowe (ca. 1873-1938), who lived in Ise-Ekiti, a town about 15 miles east of Ikere. In addition to offering new insights into the relevance of Olowe to Ikere, this essay posits a re-examination of the birth year of Olowe. In the sec­ond part, this essay dissects the Olosunta festival, which remains central to the collective identity of a people who subscribe to different religious doctrines. The early history of Ikere acknowledges the city as a site for the simultaneous reign of two rulers, the Ogoga and the Olukere. But it is the annual celebration of the Olosunta festival that serves as the rallying point for the indigenes of the city at the same time that it provides a time-honored structure for handling potentially explosive cultural and political contestations.

A Literary Interpretation of Blood Symbolism in Ifá Divination Poetry

Tis study undertakes a literary analysis of blood as a symbol as contained in the Ifá divination poetry among the Yorùbá of Southwestern Nigeria, which the researcher has collected through personal observations, consultations, and interviews with Ifá priests. Using Ricoeur’s hermeneutics theory of interpretation, the findings show that the selected Ifá divination poems present the symbolic interpretations of blood in Ifá corpus as it is entrenched in the Yorùbá psychology, sexuality, religiosity, worldview, identity and kinship. The paper presents that blood is multifaceted among the Yorùbá.

Toyin Falola@65 Conference: African Knowledge and Alternative Futures

A defining moment for me at the Toyin Falola@65 Conference titled “African Knowledges and Alternative Futures” that ran from the 29th to the 31st of January 2018 at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, was the declaration at a paper presentation session by a scholar from a Nigerian university that the culture of making promotion of Nigerian academics dependent on publication in journals outside Nigeria, particularly from the West, is ultimately counterproductive to the development of a robust academic culture in Nigeria. “Do US or British academics, for example, have to publish in Nigerian journals?” he asked. This loaded question is at the heart of the challenges and paradoxes provoked by the conference. Another definitive encounter for me was another presenter’s outlining of the concept of an African, as different from an Asian or a Western epistemology or way of arriving at relating to knowledge. Yet another was Emmanuel Ofuasia’s explanation of what he describes as the Yoruba origin Ifa knowledge system’s anticipating of deconstructivist hermeneutics centuries before the development of this post-modern scholarly phenomenon in the West. Complementing these occurrences is yet another represented by Dr. Joan Ugo Mbagwu expounding on indigenous methods of conflict resolution and countering terrorism in Africa. I shall use these encounters as pivots in exploring the significance of the conference in the body of this essay.