How to be relevant in global politics- Don

BY DAYO JOHNSON
AKURE—A University don, Professor Oluyemisi Adebowale, has said Nigeria can only be relevant in the global politics if she rejuvenates and sustains its indigenous languages.

Professor Adebowale who teaches at the Department of Linguistics and Languages, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State, made this assertion while delivering the 5th Inaugural Lecture of the University.

Adebowale, a Professor of Yoruba, delivered the inaugural lecture titled: ‘Writing and Reacting: The Experience in Indigenous Yorùbá Literary Art.’

According to her “For Nigeria to be relevant in the globalised world, its indigenous languages must not die.  There is need for creative writers to write in the indigenous African languages. Since literature serves as cultural repository, it is worthless trying to use a totally strange and foreign language to preserve African culture.”

She emphasized the need for African writers to employ indigenous languages to present their literary creations, noting that English, French or Portuguese languages in which some of them write are languages of the few in Africa.