Professor Calls for Devotion to Indigenous Knowledge Production Systems

A Professor of Literary Theory/Criticism and Text-stylistics at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Professor Nelson Fashina, has stated that it was time Nigerian universities and research institutions began to explore more advanced, and give more devotion to the nation’s indigenous knowledge production systems.

Prof. Fashina made the call in the 523rd Inaugural Lecture of the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, which he delivered on behalf of the Faculty of Arts.

The lecture was entitled “Text, Grammatology and the Automation of Theories in (African) Literary Discourse.”

The Professor noted that Western scholarship had failed to realise that Africa’s theory of art antidates their own because Ifa is said to have been existing since 10,000 B.C.

From Ifatory, he stated that Africans can generate their own indigenous body of knowledge in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Political Science, Anthropology, History and above all, Literature and Linguistics- which are all offsprings of Philosophy, the mother of all disciplines.

Professor Fashina advised Nigerians not to see any presidential candidate as a saint but should apply an objective barometer to their critical judgments, noting that Nigerians should not deify any of the presidential aspirants, otherwise, they would be guilty of prejudiced bigotry.

The Professor disclosed that he introjected the ongoing political discourse into his lecture to underscore the humanistic relevance of his discipline to sociopolitical reality.

Olusola Akintonde