By Ola Ajayi
IBADAN—EMINENT Yoruba sons and daughters yesterday gathered at Ibadan to brainstorm on how the cultural values of the ethnic group would not go into extinction.

The programme tagged 3rd Oodu’a distinguished lecture, book presentation and award to winners of Odu’a  Yoruba Essay Competition which was organised by the Odu’a Investment Company Limited was well-attended by notable Yoruba men and women.

During the lecture, a former Vice-Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife,  Professor Wande Abimbola, Awise Agbaye, expressed fear that in the next 50 years, the language of Yoruba and all enviable Yoruba cultural endowments could go into  extinction.

He said, the indigenes  had lost most of their cultural enrichment like drumming, songs, folk tales and dressing just because of the recognition they gave to English Language at the expense of their mother tongue and noted that in “most homes, some educated people now find it difficult to communicate with their children in their mother tongue.”

The don called on the Oyo State Government to come to the rescue of the language by making it compulsory for all private and public schools in the state to teach in Yoruba.
Still lamenting on the relegation of the language, he posited that there were over 100million Yoruba people scattered all over the world.

Though, the Yoruba population spread across six countries in the world, he said in Brazil which has over 50 million Yorubas, the language was at the brink of total extinction and if care was not taken the same ugly story would be told about Yoruba in Nigeria in the next 50 years.

Earlier, the Group Managing Director, Odu’a Investment Company Limited, Mr. Adebayo Jimoh said, “we need to reach into the past, review some of the steps taken in building a strong and profitable group and look forward in the context of global dynamics to have a transparent, slim and more viable conglomerate.”

According to him,  years back, the company came up with the idea of reviving the Yorubas Cultural heritage which is gradually going into extinction by inaugurating a committee of eminent Yorubas known as Yoruba Centre of Excellence.

Their assignment, he noted was to revive the Yoruba heritage which is being threatened  by western culture.

The Chairman of the occasion, Prince Adelusi Adeluyi said the past of Yoruba was very glorious and that they must look inward to see what actually went wrong.