The historian Toyin Falola is a professor of African Studies, currently the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin.
He attended the University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), where he obtained his MA and Ph.D in history.
He thought at OAU before leaving Nigeria for the United States of America (USA).
He has authored and edited more than one hundred books.
He is known for Historiography in Africa.
Falola is involved in complex historical investigations, interpreting comprehensively cultural forms and norms through the application of Afrocentric logic. His adventure into Africa's past has revealed the potency of Africa's science and civilization, a phenomenon watered down by the continent's colonial and other experiences.
Falola is a global colossus diving into historical oceans with astute inquisitiveness and posting the very essence of intellectualism as a tool for self and African emancipation.
He builds shrines of deep reasoning, yet shies away from receiving the sacrifices place before the oracle.
His ascendancy into the congress of intellectual oracles is widely recognized, but his Africanist consciousness awaits deeper understanding by the Africans he defends. This does not take from the global perspectives that radiate from his works.
Falola's understanding of the workings of the global system should draw the attention of the Nigerian state to the Intellectual Revolution the Falolas have launched.
Their failure comes when Africa remains a laggard of the world in the nearest future.
In his new book "The Toyin Falola Reader—on African Culture, Nationalism, Development and Epistemologies", he examines the consequences of Africa's past on its today and tomorrow.
In Chapter 20, "Things Fall Apart: the Rise and Fall of the African Academy", Falola asserts that nationalism provoked the demand for academic institutions in much of Africa and suggested the themes for the first generation of scholars to examine.
What themes?
Did Falola not say that African intellectuals would provide the leadership ideas for Africa's transformation?
Have they?
Who is an intellectual?
In the Chapter 20 essay, Falola tells the story of Africanus Horton. Horton called for an African university financed by government to train Africans in science and technology.
This is foresight, right?
After more than 100years since Horton's call, African states are yet to be technologically savvy despite the establishment of numerous African universities of science and technology.
Why?
Can this be linked to James Johnson's position that missionary education turned Africans into enemies of their own race?
Was Nnamdi Azikiwe dreaming when he said African states can become overnight a "continent of light" with a leading university?
Prof. Falola is of the view that without education, Africanization would be difficult to pursue.
Is Africanization an African magic?
What does it mean?
The colonialists restricted education because it leads to social change. Can it be said that African leadership restricted and is restricting education to avoid social change?
Who protects the weak in a society hijacked by a political class bent on suffocating the people?
Charles Kabuto Kabuye answers:
"We are frightened men,
Men without core or guts
We move and act by group control
We fear everything with funny consequences
Our brand of religion is a chain of scape gods
Through it we fear to discuss the movement of our humanity"
As Prof. Falola answers these questions and more, it is important to note that the primary role of African universities is to be part of the solution to the problem of underdevelopment.
Toyin Falola had short term teaching engagements at the University of Cambridge and other highly rated universities.
He is a Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria and of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.
The academic giant has received numerous prestigious awards including The Lincoln Award, Nigerian Diaspora Academic Prize, Cheikh Anta Diop Award, and Africana Studies Distinguished Global Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award.
At the University of Texas at Austin, he has received among others the Jean Holloway Award for Teaching Excellence, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, and the Career Research Excellence Award.
The annual Toyin Falola International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora (TOFAC), is a forum to discuss and find solutions to African problems. It was initiated in his honour for his excellent contribution to the bank of knowledge.
The last edition was held at the University of Ibadan from 29 January to 2 February 2018, with the theme "African Knowledge and Alternative Future".
Some of his books are:
Africa, Empire and Globalization
Britain and Nigeria: Exploitation or Development?
Yoruba Warlords of the Nineteenth Century
Ibadan: Foundation, Growth and Change 1830-1960
He wrote African Politics in Postimperial Times, with Richard L. Sklar.
Toyin Falola on State Affairs!
TO LISTEN:
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