Toyin Falola@65 Conference : African Knowledges and Alternative FuturesA Cognitive and Cultural ExplosionPart 2ReflectionsOluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
The formal sharing of ideas in scholarly presentations at the conference is over. What follows on the day of the morning of which I began writing this, the 31st of January 2018, is going with the celebrant on whose behalf the academic and social festivities have been organised, to Ago-Iwoye, to participate, through giving moral support and enjoying the moment, in Toyin Falola's reception of an honorary doctorate from the Olabisi Onabanjo University. The award ceremony completed, I have resumed writing this.
Rather than continuing my account of this wonderful experience purely through a chronological recounting as I had promised in my first essay on these festivities and which I shall continue with after this essay, I would like to devote this piece to reflection on the convergence of multifarious possibilities on myself as a participant at these celebrations, presenting the nexus of perceptions about life the conference and its associated convivialities have been for me.
Looking back over the last four days, the arrival day and the three days of festivities that followed, it is clear I have had one of the greatest experiences of my life. The entire encounter dramatizes the celebration, by a group of people from different aspects of life, of the power and beauty of the life of the mind, a life to which I am also committed, this experience actualizing, in a spectacular manner, the power of such a life. All scholars will not be as celebrated as Falola, but people will always exist who will testify to the validity and power of the work of the scholar as a particular type of person, a committed ruminator on and disseminator of reflections on the significance of our existence as we journey between the great unknowns.
The picture by me directly above depicts a climatic point in what I describe as the unrobing and rerobing sequence of the banquet of Tuesday, 30 January 2018, at the International Conference Centre, Ibadan, part of the Toyin Falola@65 Conference and festivities. Adeshina Afolayan assists Toyin Falola in putting on the agbada, an elaborate form of classical Nigerian male couture, presented to Falola by the conference organising committee composed of himself, Samuel Oloruntoba, looking on, smiling at Afolayan's right, Wale Ghazal and Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso.
On being presented with the splendid agbada, Falola spontaneously removed his cap and the exquisitely prepared agbada he was already wearing, in order to put on the new one he was being presented with, in recognition of the grand symbolism represented by the presentation, in a culture, Yoruba/Nigerian/African, in which clothes are central symbolic forms, artistic and scriptic signifiers, at times functioning as an entire library of semiotic configurators, as in Nigerian Cross River ukara cloth encrusted with the cosmos spanning Nsibidi symbolism and Ghanaian Adinkra symbolism originating from its use in symbolising messages brought from beyond birth and messages taken beyond life in the world. "Eniyan ni aso mi", states the Yoruba proverb, which may be translated as "People represent the clothes with which I am splendidly adorned", a saying that encapsulates the symbolism of the presentation ceremony at the Falola conference banquet, a ceremony that incidentally sums up the implications of the festivities dramatized by the celebration of Falola.
Falola's younger professional associates whose lives he has contributed to shaping positively have chosen to expand the scholar's self adornment generated by the reach of his scholarship by showcasing that achievement through this conference and its festivities, achieving the monumental scope of the celebrations by drawing upon the goodwill of numerous people positively impacted by the master scholar's intellectual and pastoral genius as thinker, institution builder and mentor, the triadic configuration of Falola's career, as outlined by Gloria Emeagwali in her keynote speech at the conference.
Without the recognition of one's achievements by others, how will the significance of that achievement be actualised among humanity? Without helping to build others through recognition and cultivation of their potential, how will the commonwealth of human well being expand?
Falola has adorned himself. Falola has adorned others. Those others whom he has adorned have chosen to adorn him in turn.
What the picture above lacks in resolution, it makes up for in its evocation of the kinetic power of the moment it captures.
The complete unrobing and rerobing sequence is on Flickr.
The revered Alaafin of Oyo, His Imperial Majesty, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III, Oba Adedokun Omoniyi Abolarin, the Orangun of Oke-Ila, Oba Saliu Akanmu Adetunji, the Olubadan of Ibadan, accompanied by the attendant chiefs of the Alaafin and the Obas, , Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, the governor of Osun state, the representatives of the governor of Oyo State and other political and traditional leaders who celebrated with us were not there because association with Falola would necessarily add anything to their stature in life, assist with political connections or facilitate access to various forms of secular power. They were there to celebrate someone whose ideas have moved many, whose mentorship ripples across the globe, from PhD students to younger and senior academics whom he has guided or collaborated with or both, thereby shaping many careers.
He is also a rich socialiser, as evident from his interactions at the festivities and the impromptu creative interaction I had with him and a couple of his friends on the night after the banquet.
The scholarly dignitaries who were present, from the President of the Historical Society of Nigeria and Head of the Department of History, University of Ibadan, Professor CBN Ogbogbo, who gave one of the two keynote speeches, to Professor Jide Owoeye, Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council, Lead City University, Ibadan, to the representative of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, speaking for the vice-chancellors and past vice-chancellors of various universities who were at the celebrations, a declaration also articulated by the spokesperson of the Olabisi Onabanjo University in awarding Falola the honorary doctorate, described themselves as compelled to pay homage, because homage it certainly is, to a figure whose work has become an inspirational matrix, a dynamic receptacle for practically everything about scholarship on Africa.
Falola's friends who were there and the academics who organized the conference both testified to his inspiring qualities that moved so many people and so many institutions to gather in Ibadan to honour someone who is not a captain of industry, is not and has never been a political figure and does not seem to nurse such aspirations, whose life is defined by what Gloria Emeagwali described in her keynote speech as his indefatigable work in generating knowledge, cultivating institutions and building people.
Further developing the theme of clothing as symbolic signifier in relation to the Falola conference and its festivities, is the image directly above, of a woman wearing a t-shirt which she and a number of other mentees of Falola made to commemorate the occasion.
The many scholars who took part in the conference were drawn by the opportunity to continue the task of cultivating citadels of knowledge represented by the processes of reflection, empirical investigation, recording and distribution that defines the world of scholarship, pre-eminence in which has moved so many to congregate in the city where Falola was born and where he spent his earliest formative years, a city resplendent in Nigerian cultural history by the many luminaries associated with the University of Ibadan in the course of its existence and by the city's strategic role in Yoruba history, that history being the originating platform of Falola's scholarship from where he has fanned out to an encyclopaedic engagement with the humanities and the social sciences particularly in relation to Africa.
This whirlwind of activity has placed a mirror to my mind, compelling me to ask what my life is about and how best to bring to fruition the potential I can see within me, as has been achieved for himself by Toyin Falola, living his childhood in inauspicious circumstances, as one of his friends, Bola Dauda, described him in a paper at the conference, "Lessons from Toyin Falola's Way of Thinking", yet who has spectacularly reshaped that life, becoming an exemplar for many.
To be continued.
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