Laurels in the Humanities (I)
Professor ANTONIA YETUNDE FOLARIN SCLHLEICHER Mr. President. I present to you, Professor Antonio Yetunde Folarin Schleicher, Professor of African Languages and Literature of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States of America, as an eminently worthy scholar for the award of the Overseas Fellowship of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. United States of America. Professor Schleicher […]
Professor ANTONIA YETUNDE FOLARIN SCLHLEICHER
Mr. President. I present to you, Professor Antonio Yetunde Folarin Schleicher, Professor of African Languages and Literature of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States of America, as an eminently worthy scholar for the award of the Overseas Fellowship of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. United States of America. Professor Schleicher is a renowned candidate who has subjected numerous African languages to linguistic analysis, having charted a novel path in the study, exposition and presentation of African languages, especially Yoruba language, to the outside world and to foreign scholars who are in search of proficiency in an African language.
A sound and solid scholar with a truly intimidating bio-data, Professor Schleicher obtained her Bachelor of Arts and Masters degrees from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1980 and 1982 respectively, in General Linguistics before proceeding to the USA for her Master and Doctor of Philosophy, also in General Linguistics, both from the University of Kansas in the years 1985 and 1987. Thus, she had sunk a deep root in scholarship on her native, cultural sub-soil in Nigeria before stepping out, off-shore, to establish and disperse her culture in America.
Besides winning huge grants and bagging various awards she has also made solid contributions to knowledge through original publications. She has published twelve books, twenty-one peer review journal articles, edited 20 books and 6 journals of remarkable quality and of international worth.
Her employment profile and working experience are equally daunting, rising from a mere instructor at the Teacher Training College of Ayangba, Kogi State (then Benue State), in 1980-81 to become a Professor of African Languages and Literature in faraway University of Wisconsin-Madison in the year 2000 where she has remained till date, teaching, researching, mentoring and publishing in the fields of Foreign and Second Language Acquisition, Aspects of African languages and Linguistics, Phonetics and Linguistics, Tonology, Morphology, Experimental Phonetics, Gender and Culture and so on. She has been Director, National African Language Resource Center and Director, and African Language Flagship Center, both at Wisconsin-Madison. She has also been Co-Director of African Languages program at Yale University, among many spheres of professional and academic engagements.
Mr. President, it is with unalloyed confidence and great thrill that I present to you, this ground-breaking scholar, this selfess academic mentor who has supported over 40 Postgraduate African students to obtain their Masters and doctoral degrees in the USA, this multiple award winner who has received the biggest multi-million dollar grant in the history of African language learning and teaching in the USA, this formidable world scholar, for the award of the Overseas Fellowship of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.
Professor Theodora Akachi-Ezeigbo
Permit me, Mr. President, to present to you a woman with startling credentials as a frontline female Nigerian creative writer (novelist, poet, dramatist, children literature writer, profound scholar and public essayist), Professor Theodora Akachi Ezeigbo, for admission into the College of Fellows of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.
Professor Akachi-Ezeigbo studied at the Universities of Lagos and Ibadan from where she obtained her main academic degrees: Bachelor of Arts in English with a Second Class (Upper Division) in 1974 and her Master of Arts degree in English in 1982. She went to the University of Ibadan where she obtained her PhD in English in the year 1986.
Her entire tertiary academic and professional career had been at the University of Lagos, climbing from the lowest rungs of the ladder as a Graduate Assistant in 1977, and rising to the peak of her career as a Professor of English in the year 1999. A highly talented scholar- novelist, straddling the inter-textual terrain of creative writing and critical scholarship, Akachi Ezeigbo is a woman of superlative attribution as a profound scholar and an outstanding writer, whose scholarship interrogates contemporary imaginative writing in Nigeria and Africa, including her own numerous award-winning creative works. She is a creative writer whose works provide fertile grounds for the evolvement of critical canons of literary studies.
On the level of scholarship, Professor Akachi-Ezeigbo has published four solid books and co-edited two others in the spheres of literatures of war, with specific reference to the Nigerian Civil war as well as gender discourse. Her book, titled Fact and Fiction in the Nigerian Civil War lends tremendous insight, reference and depth to our understanding and interpretation of the cataclysmic events of the fratricidal carnage in Nigeria generally referred to as the Nigerian Civil war as interrogated by creative writers. This study propelled an international attention leading to her collaborative work with Liz Gunner on The Literatures of War, a book that has become a notable reference text on the literary aftermaths of three wars in Africa—Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the Horn of Africa. Her other focusing on gender politics and discourse, have made significant contribution to our understanding of the various issues, theories and perceptions of gender relations in a patriarchal society.
A versatile researcher, prolific scholar and talented creative writer, she has, besides the full-length and edited books, published thirty books on children fiction, short stories, full-length prose-fiction, poetry and dramatic texts. She has 26 chapters in books, twenty-two journal articles in peer reviewed journals and two translated works of children literature.
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For her prodigy, prolificity, Professor Akachi-Ezeigbo is a winner of multiple national and international prizes, awards and honours, most important of which are ; the Commonwealth Fellowship (1989-90), the British Council Fellow, Cambridge (1998), the ANA/Spectrum Prize for Fiction(2001), ANA/Zulu Sofola Prize for Women Writing 2001), ANA/NDDC Prize for Literature (2002), Joint Winner of the Nigerian Prize for Literature by NNLG (2004), Joint Winner of the NNLG Prize for Children Literature (2007),the ANA/Cadbury Prize (2009) and Best Researcher Award in the Arts and Humanities of the University of Lagos among an unending list of outstanding laurels.
Mr President, I am most honoured to present to you for admission into the College of Fellows of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, this woman of compulsive industry, outstanding literary scholarship, prodigious creativity, a multiple award winner an international scholar and a humane woman of value and virtue, Professor Theodora Akachi-Ezeigbo.
Professor Sola Akinrinade
I present before you, Mr. President, a star-studded scholar, a First Class degree earner, Professor Sola Akinrinade, for admission into the prestigious College of Fellows of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, with the following justifications.
Sola Akinrinade attended the old University of Ife, Ile-Ife, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with a First Class Honours in 1981. He was the best graduating student in the Faculty of Arts in that year. He took his Master of Arts from the same University in 1984 and took off to the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London for his PhD which he obtained in the year 1988. In 1992, he was awarded the Certificate of Completion, Advanced Seminar on Foreign Policy Process, from the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland—a certificate which did him a Yeoman’s service in his future career as will soon become obvious.
Since 1982, as a Graduate Assistant in the Department of History at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Professor Akinrinade has served meritoriously as a professional academic, rising through the ranks to become a Professor of History of the same University in 1999. He served in various academic capacities in the university system as a Dean of Faculty and Chairman, Committee of Deans of the University—administrative acumen and experiences which became handy in his bid for the Vice-Chancellorship of the Osun State University, a pioneer position he has held since 2007 to date.
Professor Akinrinade has published extensively in his chosen field(s) of specialization History, foreign policy, diplomacy, economics, and international relations. In spite of his administrative engagements, his scholarship remains current, deep in scope and relevant. He has published nine books with a title, Economic Development in Africa, being as recent as 2012. A prolific and versatile researcher, he has also published 48 articles in peer reviewed national and international journals.
A well-earned reward for his academic and intellectual endeavours is his receipt of numerous Research Fellowships, Fellowships, grants, prizes, awards, honours and distinctions. These include, among many; the Henry Charles Chapman Fellow, the African Security Programme Fellowship, the Academic Council of the United Nations System Award, the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) and the Fellowship of the Historical Society of Nigeria.
Professor Akinriande’s research focus and publications reside, primarily, in the fields of African Diplomatic History and International relations where he has extensively interrogated the phenomenon of the co-operation on foreign policy among developing nations through the engagement of African nations in international organizations such as the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS), the Commonwealth of Nations and the African Union (AU).His research findings have been of tremendous value to our understanding of African foreign policy and international relations in particular and the functioning of international organizations through his theoretical postulates of foreign policy co-operation in a rapidly globalizing universe.
Mr. President, it is therefore my privilege and unhidden delight, to invite you to admit this versatile multi-faceted scholar, this university administrator per excellence, this reputable student of diplomacy and international relations and this versatile and profound researcher, as a Fellow of the highly coveted Nigerian Academy of Letters.
Professor Oladele Olatunde LAYIWOLA
I have the honour and privilege, Mr. President, to present to you, Oladele Olatunji Olayiwola, who was promoted Professor at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan in the year 1998, for admission to the College of Fellows of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.
Profesor Olayiwola attended the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts Degree in English, with a Second Class (Upper Division) in the year 1981. Five years later, in 1986, he bagged his Doctorate degree in Theatre Studies, from the School of English, University of Leeds, United Kingdom He returned soon after to the Institute of African Studies, Ibadan, where he has remained and carved a niche for himself, from a chequered and distinguished academic career which began with his appointment as a Research Fellow in 1987. He became a Senior Research Fellow in 1993, and was promoted Professor in 1998. This rather speedy academic career was a product of compulsive industry, focused research and versatility in his inimitable commitment to academia and its traditional expectations of teaching, research and publications.
There is a certain uniqueness in the multi-multi-disciplinary academic exploits of Professor Olayiwola straddling three equally engaging areas of specialization; Performance studies, his foundational domain, literary theory and criticism and the relatively new field of scholarship in the Humanities, Cultural studies. The distinctive accomplishment of this rounded scholar is his success in meshing these disciplines, crystallizing and integrating them as instruments and critical tools of humanistic discourse. His essential contribution to knowledge is his deployment of the new tools of cultural studies to performance studies, through which he has accessed indigenous practices and performance modes such as ritual and festival drama and their aesthetic and ideological applications by contemporary dramatists.
Professor Olayiwola has churned out a bewildering number of original, innovative and profoundly lucid academic publications. He has published 57 works; Two Monographs, 19 Chapters in edited books, 24 articles in peer reviewed national and international journals with eight others already in press. In all of these, he has deployed his scholarship to re-define African culture in a rapidly globalizing world. He has also engaged comparison and contrast to establish the commonality of our humanity as creative and thinking beings.
Here then, Mr President is the intellectually robust cultural activist, profound performance aesthetician and lucid literary theorist, Professor Oladele Olayiwola whom I whole-hearted request you to admit as a Fellow of the Nigerian Academic of Letters.
PROFESSOR EGBOKHARE, FRANCIS OISAGHADE.
Mr. President, it is my pleasure and delightful duty to present to you Egbokhare, Francis Oisaghaede, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Ibadan, as a worthy candidate for the Fellowship of the College of Fellows of the Nigerian Academy of Letters for the reasons that shall emerge presently.
Professor Egbokhare studied at the University of Benin where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Linguistics, with a Second Class (Upper Division) in the year 1983. He proceeded to the University of Ibadan and between the year 1984 and 1990, he earned a Masters of Arts and a doctorate degree in Linguistics. He spent his entire academic career, since 195 at the University of Ibadan, rising through the ranks from an Assistant Lecturer in 1985 until 1999 when he took a Professorial Chair in Linguistics. He has remained in Ibadan ever since. From Ibadan, he has made tremendous contribution to the development of his academic discipline, through rigorous research, committed pedagogy and notable administrative engagements.
A prolific scholar and researcher, Professor Egbokhare has to his credit 15 scholarly books and monographs, 36 well-researched articles in peer review journals in national and international outlets. Besides, he has collaborated with distinguished scholars abroad, especially with the well-respected Professor of Linguistics, Schafer, R.P. with whom he has carried out ground-breaking research work and published 35 books and essays in the space of 20 years (1992 and 2012)
Professor Egbokhare is a ground-breaker and a profound innovator in his rare but well-chosen field of scholarship where he has made tremendous contribution to knowledge. In the area of sound symbolism and iconicity, syntax-phonology and language documentation, he engaged in remarkable pioneering studies, specifically, on his mother tongue, emai, an Edoid language. Building on solid research blocks and findings of linguists preceding him in edoid studies (Ben Elugbe, Amayo and Elimelech) he, in collaboration with Professor R.P. Schaefer, has produced a 552 page dictionary of Email (2007) and two volumes of oral tradition narratives running to 1,261 pages. A versatile and compulsive scholar, Egbokare churned out twenty joint publications on typological studies, syntactic theories and human cognition.
Mr. President, here then is the resourceful , original and deeply focused scholar of phonology, language documentation, the Nigerian linguistic ecology, among others, and who has carried out intensive research in an indigenous, marginalized language, transforming it into one of the most rigorously studied languages in Nigeria, thus providing a unique contribution to West African language studies, whom I invite you to decorate, most deservingly, with the Fellowship of the Nigerian Academy of letters
Professor Olu Obafemi, FNAL.