Laurels in the Humanities (II)

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 […]

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.

To be continued

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.