My reply to Segun's response below mine
Great thanks Segun.
deeply appreciated.
On Fri, 11 Sep 2020 at 02:19, 'Segun Olude <segunolude@mac.com> wrote:
Yoruba"Odo ti o ba gbagbe orisun rẹ yio gbẹ"English"A river that forgets its source soon dries up."Thank you, Toyin. I would actually add your name to the long list, except that you now go back and forth, physical and virtually, connecting or re-connecting us to parts we in diaspora have been severed from.This write-up is food for thought and part of a larger narrative. For the sake of a proper discourse, I will keep my comment to the point you raised.Africa has suffered an all-inclusive talent drain — education, spirituality, administrative, etc., at every level of society. The most crucial is the drain that's happened and continues to happen in educational institutions.Why that conclusion? In my opinion, institutions are supposed to continuously produce "new crops" that would "feed" the nation's capacity for thought, spirit, intellect, and general sociology-economic well-being.When farmers depart and leave the land untilled, you know what happens. Year after year, Nigeria especially, has suffered due to the departure of notable individuals in academia. Yes, as you rightly pointed out, we know why people leave. There is no blaming anyone there. We are part of it.One of the solutions I proposed in the past is some kind of national service for Diasporans, fashioned along the lines of NYSC. In this case, call it (Voluntary) Professional National Service, where those abroad go back to serve their country for three to six months each or every other year, or however convenient. This is just one idea and it's open to modification. We have to find ways to turn the tide and slowly restore broken institutions. If I have anything to contribute, it is this one idea.Again, thank you for gently reminding us of our joint responsibilities.'Segun OludeOn Sep 7, 2020, at 12:55 PM, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju toyin.adepoju@gmail.com [NaijaObserver] <NaijaObserver@yahoogroups.com> wrote:Underdevelopment CompoundedLamenting the Haemorrhaging of African Universities as Foundational Scholars Migrated to the West<safe_image.jpg>
Ato Quayson's on "SOPHOCLES, Antigone: Polis, Oikos, and Necropolitics"
at his YouTube channel Critic.Reading.Writing
Oluwatoyin Vincent AdepojuAbstractExamining the implications of African scholars' migrations to the West.Apologies for the Nigeria centred character of this piece. It shows the limitations of my knowledge, suggesting the need for me to expand the scope of my understanding of scholarship on Africa and by Africans.As foundational figures of African scholarship migrated to the West, what was lost?Has what was lost been replaced?Has the absence of these figures been filled?What ideational configurations, creative pedagogical strategies and impactful research orientations took the place of the flame they took with them?Makere University, Uganda- Ali MazruiObiora Udechukwu, central ideologue and artistic master of the University of Nsukka art schoolSuch proteges of the school as Olu Oguibe, Sylvester Ogbechie and Chika Okeke-Agulu, who have carved distinctive niches of achievement in shaping discourse on African art from their locations in the United StatesThe University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University constellation represented by Olabiyi Yai, Rowland Abiodun, Babatunde Lawal, their student Moyosore Okediji, Biodun Jeyifo, Toyin Falola, Jacob Olupona- figures whose work is fundamental across disciplines in African StudiesUniversity of Benin-Chinyere Okafor, Odun Balogun, Virginia Ola-three of the best teachers and most dynamic scholars I encountered as their student in the Dept of English and Literature
The University of Ibadan example demonstrated by Abiola Irele, Isidore Okpewho and others.University of Port Harcourt-Nimi Wariboko- integrator extraordinaire of Kalabari and Pentecostal thoughtWhat do I hear in the back of my mind as I write this?Is it a dirge for the countless students unmentored, untaught by these colossi, creatives who took their great work ethic and its fruits to other shores, a lament for domestic traditions of knowledge diluted or sundered, scholarly cultures either compromised or having to start building afresh, even as the question looms- where are these scholars more relevant-in the West, centred in its own culture even as it becomes a global nexus for the study of world cultures or Africa, whose intellectual, cognitive foundations may be described as far from being firm?The question is not so much about the fact that scholarship proceeds in African and particularly Nigerian universities, the latter being those whose scholars I am better informed about, but the question of continuity between successive generations of scholars, between pedagogical cultures across generations, these being the interpersonal networks and institutional systems that constitute the core of institutionalized learning.People must migrate but what are the implications of these migrations for the zones migrated from?Being taught by Daniel Izevbaye, one of the most prolific and penetrating critics of African literature at the time, taking his sabbatical from the University of Ibadan at the University of Benin in the late 80s, left an indelible impression on me.How accessible to Africans generally and to Nigerians particularly, are the beautiful articles and books written by scholars on Africa working in the West ?Even then, can books and articles replace physical presence, direct participation in shaping learning systems, touching people directly, generating pedagogical and research ideologies that shape educational systems?Gershom Scholem, a German Jew who migrated to Israel, founded the modern study of Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. That location remains a centre, if not the centre, of the field, even as the field is now represented by scholars in different parts of the world.The originating and perhaps continuing centralization of the study of Jewish mysticism in Israel contributes, even if indirectly, to Israel's efforts to cultivate a Jewish culture representing its presence in the region, a re-constellation of Jews after centuries of often terrible exile in Europe, an achievement that must be recognized in spite of negativities and contradictions represented by the manner of the founding of Israel and the policies it has embracedWhat may be learnt on this subject of scholarly migrations and disciplinary centralisations from the intellectual and career journeys of Abiola Irele, one of the most prominent of Africa's migrant scholars?
Akin Adesokan references Irele in ''In the House of Many Mansions'' ( Transition, Issue 124, 2017, pp. 19-21 ):''[ Irele] told the scholar Elaine Savory in 2008, before moving back to Nigeria: 'I've become convinced that our real place is back home. We cannot function properly in the West because our situation here is ambiguous. African studies as a field is marginal to the interests of western universities…whatever we say or do, the western universities do not need us. But perhaps we need to begin to think that we don't need them either' "Irele did great things at Kwara State University when he was there on his return to Nigeria but his last residential address was Harvard which he had earlier left for Kwara State.Had he returned fully, or was he visiting?If returning fully, had he changed his mind, leaning more towards the combination of pain of exile and acceptance of this migration he demonstrates in ''The African Scholar"( 1991)?Oyeronke Oyewumi, one of the most prominent of Nigerian scholars in the US, made the following assertions in a comment on a February 10, 2020 Facebook post by Professor Mojubaolu Okome, another Nigerian scholar in the US:I fear that Adeyemi Adeola's comment suggests that it was the coming to America that made professor Okome such an accomplished, erudite and inspiring intellectual. That is not the case: professor Okome and many others were homegrown! The USA is the beneficiary of all this Naija talent, not the other way round! The fundamental question is how to grow talent at home and use our assets to build our institutions and our countries at home, in the first instance.
To make progress, we need to stem the process of looking outside the country in order to make our lives. Sadly, it is not working for us as a collective!
Adeyemi Adeola, what do you mean by "Nigeria education isn't enough?" For whom, for what? That is the question. Prof Okome and the seeming success of some of us who came to America is telling enough.
We are examples of the failure of the thinking that sending our people to America is a good thing for the country. If our generation had been truly successful as a community, then this hemorrhaging out of Nigeria would have stopped.
We are educating Nigerians for exportation, what is the benefit in that, for the country if there are no viable institutions to which to return?
As the data presented shows, even at the individual level, in the USA despite our hard work and best efforts we are thoroughly discriminated against and not being recognized and rewarded accordingly for our efforts.
We all have terrible stories to tell. The cost is great and I am afraid that the psychological cost may be even greater for the second generation.
oro po ninu iwe kobo [ Allusion in Yoruba to complexity and depth of a subject] Knowledge and its comprehension are multilayered. It is obvious that we, as African peoples are in dire straits. Though I do not want to minimize individual effort & apparent success, on what basis do we fetishize individuals when actually we are all displaced, wandering in waterless places and placing our progeny & future in peril. Can we do better than manage the crises into which we have been plunged as a people?
In a COVID-19 and post COVID world of accelerated connectivity, will such migrations have less impact on the systems migrated from?Will such connectivity increase significantly the ability of scholars to impact various learning environments from wherever they are at any point in time?Ato Quayson, literature and theory scholar from Ghana and currently a professor in the US, has commenced critical readings on YouTube through his channel Critic. Reading. Writing.Toyin Falola references what he calls ''brain circulation'' as a corrective to the ''brain drain'' represented by such migrations, and demonstrated in such efforts as Jacob Olupona's role, travelling between Ife and his US location, in the founding of a research centre at Obafemi Awolowo University, Falola's own liaisons, between Nigeria and his place in the US, with various Nigerian universities, and the work of Pius Adesanmi and other Diaspora scholars at the Kwara State University Abiola Irele School of Theory and Criticism.We cannot return to the past. We can only shape the present in constructing the future..__._,_.___
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