Does Yoruba Literature Need Saving?

An ardent radio listener residing in Ibadan from the year 2011/12 would need no introduction to Bade Ojuade’s Àkàgbádùn, a Yoruba book-reading radio programme that aired for an hour every Tuesday on Oluyole FM, one of Oyo state’s famous radio stations. The programme kicked off with Lawuyi Ogunniran’s Eégún Aláré, with Bade Ojuade, a seasoned Yoruba linguist himself, reading, alternating between characters whose dialogues he read in the respective Yoruba dialects he gave them. Eégún Aláré captures the lives of performing masquerades and is therefore replete with ẹ̀sà, the Egungun chant which Ojuade also performed. This became my first contact with that aspect of Yoruba oral literature. The programme would go on to feature Adebayo Faleti’s Ọmọ Olókùn Ẹṣin, Oladejo Okediji’s Àjàlólẹrù, Bamiji Ojo’s Ọba Adìkúta, and Mẹ́numọ́ before my family’s commitment to it dwindled. The programme was rescheduled to air for 30 minutes on Thursdays and Fridays. This, being quite difficult to keep up with, in addition to the boom in the Nigerian Afrobeats music scene swayed our interest. By the time we grew blasé from our music adventure and tried to go back to being the devoted listeners we were, we discovered the programme was no longer airing.

‘The programme was discontinued in 2019 because I, alongside other people, left the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) due to some occurrences that we were not comfortable with,’ Bade Ojuade told me.

He further reveals that on returning to BCOS in 2020, following the intervention of the Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, he was not allowed to take over the programme from the broadcaster who had carried on with it due to what he described as workplace politics.

One of the significances of Ojuade’s Àkàgbádùn was that the listeners were exposed to classic Yoruba novels. Alongside being entertained, his appropriate rendition of the different forms of Yoruba oral literature in the novels further enriched our knowledge of it. The interest of the Oyo State-owned media in upholding Yoruba language and literature birthed the programme. For Ojuade, when the book-reading programme was suggested to him by BCOS management, accepting it also meant fulfilling his desire to read Yoruba literary texts on the radio. He would then quit his freelance programme, Ọpọ́n Ayé, coin Àkàgbádùn, as opposed to Àyọkà, which was suggested by the station, and kick off with it at Oluyole FM.

The success of Ojuade’s programme can be traced to his ability to blend the phonocentric quality of Yoruba orature with the reading of written literary texts. This, he confirmed, saying ‘people tell me they enjoy my programme more due to my innovative infusions like the performance of the oral literature and the use of different dialects for the characters.’

Although the book reading programme is now being continued at Oluyole FM and it still retains the name ‘Àkàgbádùn’, these qualities that endeared many listeners to it in the first place are being neglected, denying people the full pleasure of experiencing Yoruba literature. Just like this programme, I’ve witnessed how this ‘relative access’ to Yoruba novels I had while growing up diminishes or gets tampered with by the day for different reasons, restricting each younger generation’s interaction with Yoruba literature to only in classrooms and within the recommended list in the Nigerian school curriculum.

Since language is the vehicle for literature, one of the ways changes can be effected is by a provision that ensures schools in the Yoruba-speaking region of the country are tasked with fostering Yoruba language literacy and fluency among their students. To this effect, a major effort by the Nigerian government is the approval of the new educational National Language Policy that provides that students, throughout their elementary level, be taught in the indigenous language of the community where their school is located. Then, at the junior secondary level, the mother tongue will be combined with the English language as the medium of instruction. However, the faults in the policy and its near ineffectiveness since it was announced on November 30, 2022, by the then Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu—a lot of work is required to implement it as Adamu had stated has hardly begun—shows how much of a performative participant the Nigerian government is in preserving indigenous languages.

Yoruba written literature is highly influenced by the missionary and colonial presence in southwest Nigeria. Book publications in the Yoruba language began with Bibeli Mimo (1900), the Yoruba translation of the English bible, and a five-part reader series (Iwe Kika Ekini – Ekarun), which according to historical assertions were religiously motivated actions as the aim was to further spread the Christian religion among the Yoruba people and ingrain its gospel in their minds. It then progressed to include secular literary works, a development that produced the aforementioned popular literary figures most of whose works witnessed warm acceptance and wide readership at the time they were published.

Regardless of the intention behind the earliest translated English texts to Yoruba and writing in Yoruba, it sends a message that a people’s language is the clearest path to reach them, and its expansion to include actual literary works in Yoruba stemmed from the demand of a people who treasured their language to an extent, a quality that continues to fade with each passing generation, hence the number of Yoruba literates and proficient speakers keep lowering. Acknowledging this opens the conversation to include an important question: for whom will the Yoruba writer write?

The reading culture in Nigeria is argued to be poor and waning. UNICEF’s  2022 data shows that 1 in 3 Nigerian children are out of school. This is compounded by another UNICEF report that states that 3 in 4 pupils are unable to read with comprehension. Per the most recent Federal Government statistics, also in 2022, 31 per cent of the population are unable to read and write, indicating a decrease from 38 per cent in 2018. This, if it continues, combined with the rate of child illiteracy, suggests that Nigeria might be a long way from achieving the UN-established ​​​​Sustainable Development Goal 4 and its targets to ensure that everyone has equal access to quality education by 2030. This identified low literacy rate among Nigerian youths and adults, aliteracy, and the luxury which buying books have become given the poor state of the economy as part of the factors that may keep this problem around. If the number of the few readers across the country is then narrowed down to the number of people who read Yoruba literature, the contemporary Yoruba writer cannot boast of a large and committed readership.

One might argue that the Yoruba language is thriving currently. Because it is one of the most widely spoken languages in the country, there is a rise in the use of Yoruba buzzwords nationwide. The heavy influence of the language on Afrobeats is being recognised. The movie industry is also populated by works containing the presence of the Yoruba language and this has even progressed to the production of movies in which Yoruba is the only communicative medium for general consumption. All these, however, do not guarantee the safety of the Yoruba language. Why? The weakened intergenerational transmission of the language, alongside the dominance of the English language is a largely responsible factor. These can be traced to highlighted challenges like the general negative attitude to the acquisition of indigenous languages (Yoruba, in this case) in Nigerian homes, both in the country (especially in urban areas) and abroad. There is also an analysis of how the Nigerian schools and educational system, in particular, contribute to this setback.