Perspectives on Toyin Falola International Conference 2012
By
Ayo Olukotun
A fortnight ago, Excellence Hotel, Ogba in Lagos became the site of a flurry of intellectual activities as scholars from across several continents converged for the 2012 edition of the Falola Annual International Conference. Devoted to the theme �Cultures, Identities, Nationalities and Modernities in Africa and African Diaspora�, the three day intellectual feast and festival was organised by the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation(CBAAC) in collaboration with the Ibadan Cultural Studies Group(ICSG). It was truly a gathering of some of the most eminent academics jostling with not so eminent ones as well as apprentice scholars from all over the globe-Canada, United States, Japan, South Africa, Barbados, and of course the Nigerian home land. The organisation and management of the conference connoting such a far-flung ethnoscape and diasporic intellectuals tasked the administrators to their very wits although they stood up bravely to the challenges.
Interestingly, a few days before the eventful academic parley, several embassies around the world notably, those of the United States and Britain issued another round of travel advisories regarding the fragility of security in Nigeria, stating what precautions their citizens who have to travel to Nigeria should take. This Pall of uncertainty and misgivings about the host country notwithstanding, academics and the literati showed up in impressive numbers to hold forth, debate, dissect, interrogate as well as pay tribute to one of the world�s most industrious and most published scholars-he has to his credit over 120 published books, either singly authored or edited-Professor Toyin Omoyeni Falola, the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
The roll call of key note speakers; Prof. Michael Vickers, co-author with Ken Post, of one of the early foundational books on Nigerian Politics, Prof. Timothy Stapleton from the history department of Trent University in Canada, Prof. Barbara Harlow, a Centennial Professor of English Literatures also from the University of Texas at Austin and Prof. Bessie House Soremekun, Political Science Professor from Indiana University, Purdue, Indianapolis; sign posted the caliber, tenor as well as gravitas of subsequent discussion and clearly problematised issues of Black identities, cultures and modernities in a globalizing world. This rather heavy going intellectual fare which at times took on the specter and solemnity of inaugural lectures was nicely punctuated by the opening ceremony proper featuring in turn welcome addresses by Prof. Tunde Babawale, Director�General Of CBAAC, High Chief Edem Duke, Honourable Minster for Tourism, Culture and National Orientation and Prof. Ademola Da Sylva, Chairman Ibadan Cultural Studies Group. Sensitive to the international context and auspices, Duke who spoke in polished accent made a passionate plea to those he called our friends from the West to publish a Nigerian Counter-narrative which would hopefully correct the hegemonic perception of the country as a boiling cauldron of intractable conflicts in a nation on its way to terminal dissolution.
After a season of entertaining cultural displays featuring stylized indigenous drumming, artistically epileptic dancing feets, and magnificent Oriki chants composed and performed for Falola, the conference proper took off as we broke into several concurrent panels each of them devoted to sub-themes of the larger Conference motifs. The sheer range and number of papers presented totaling over 150 makes it impossible to give more than a flavor and, an appetizing aroma of the papers which covered the terrains of Architecture, Music, History, African philosophy, Cultural Studies, Literature, and Gender Studies among others. For example, although Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka was not at the Conference, he hovered around, indeed came alive in several presentations. For example, Dr. Adetayo Alabi, Associate Professor at the University of Mississippi, explores in �Wole Soyinka: Auto-biography and the Nigerian Academy�, the conflation of personal narratives exemplified in Soyinka�s auto-biographical books and the grand narrative of the Nigerian nation. In this perspective, �Ibadan: the Penkelemes Years. A memoir 1946-1965� and �You must set forth at dawn� are as much touching chronicles of the writer�s career as they are records of the convulsions which a nation often traumatized by its rulers has gone through. From the continent of Asia, in particular, the School of Global Japanese studies of Meiji University in Tokyo came an interesting exposition by Yasu�o Mizobe on Japanese Newspaper coverage of Africa (African Soldiers) during World War II. The departure of the contribution is the attention given by the Japanese press to African Soldiers who fought often heroically alongside European soldiers and were therefore categorized as the �enemy� by the Japanese. Obviously, only someone versed in the Japanese language could have ferreted out the perspectives of Newspapers such as Asahi Shinbun and Mainichi Shinbun. This leads us to ask the question whether Nigeria�s preparation for a role on the world stage includes the study of other people�s cultures, languages and perspectives as the Japanese and other great powers have done for several decades.
The breezy and widespread use of the term �post-apartheid� to refer to contemporary South Africa was intently interrogated in a paper by Ogunnubi Olusola of the School of Social Sciences University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg. Ogunnubi argues that the post-apartheid label does not adequately represent the reality and nuances of South Africa�s democratic experience since 1994 in view of the persistence of some of the system, structures, institutions and ethos that propped up apartheid for centuries. The paper suggests in this connection that the term �neo-apartheid� is more appropriate as according to him, South Africa�s post apartheid era is still in the future. On a different note, indigenous Yoruba and Benin architecture makes strong appearances in a fascinating paper by Abimbola Asojo, Department of Design, Housing and Apparel, College of Design, University of Minnesota. Dr. Asojo draws parallels between African Knowledge systems encapsulating fractal geometry in Yoruba and Benin architecture and high science, hence underlining the conceptual and mathematical character of indigenous architecture.
The travails of the Nigerian state in the face of insurgent and resurgent Islamic challenges such as the Boko Haram group, are well captured by Idayat Hassan in a paper entitled �Creation of a state within a state: Analyzing the Boko Haram within Nigeria�. Referring to the triumphalist if eerie exclamation of Abu Darda, the spokesman for Boko Haram in the aftermath of the bombing of the UN building in Abuja, in August 2011, that �Through the wisdom of Allah we have launched the attack with absolute precision� the Paper posits that the dreaded group views Nigeria in her words �as a state run by non-believers� which therefore must be continuously stormed until it is brought down. Policy makers would be enriched by the insights into the mindset of Boko Haram leaders which this expos� provides.
The sheer number of papers presented made it difficult to carry out exhaustive discussion of many of them as this would entail stretching the conference and its logistics beyond the three days allotted to it. But here was an efflorescence of largely Nigerian scholarship both diasporic and country-based connoting the glorious intellectual utopia, international in scope that once resided in this country. Can we move back from the current dystopia to a measure of the academic brilliance that we once enjoyed? The 2012 Falola International Conference appears to foreshadow the possibilities for eventual recovery.
Olukotun Ayo is a Professor of Political Science at Lead City University, Ibadan.
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
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