Despite the ongoing industrial action embarked upon by ASUU AAUA Chapter, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, witnessed an intellectually historic moment in the early September. Professor Temitope Olumuyiwa, a distinguished scholar of Yoruba Language and Dialectology, delivered the University’s 47th Inaugural Lecture titled “Changing the Change: Yoruba Language and Dialectology in a Changing Society.”
The event attracted the Vice Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellors, Registrar, Bursar, University Librarian, Deans, Directors, members of Senate, renowned academics from across tertiary institutions in Ondo State, and other dignitaries, a testament to the enduring relevance of language scholarship even in an age obsessed with technology and globalization.
But beyond the glamour of the event was a lecture that pierced through the nation’s conscience, a powerful critique of how Nigeria, and especially the Yoruba people, have allowed colonial mentality and misplaced priorities to erode their linguistic and cultural heritage.
Prof. Olumuyiwa recalled, with academic precision and moral clarity, how former Osun State Governor, Chief Bisi Akande, in 2000, laid off over 4,000 teachers in the humanities, including Yoruba teachers, dismissing their disciplines as useless to society. He also cited Lere Olayinka’s mockery of Chief Dele Momodu for studying Yoruba, a statement he described as a reflection of “famished thinking faculties.” The Professor urged such individuals to free themselves from colonial chains and mental servitude, reminding them that language is not just a tool of communication but the soul of civilization.
Quoting Awobuluyi (2010), Prof. Olumuyiwa emphasized that specialists in Yoruba and other indigenous languages can serve as consultants in governance, policy-making, agricultural extension, judicial proceedings, and the communication industry. He cited TVC Communications’0 launch of AI-powered multilingual newscasters as a practical case where Yoruba expertise will be crucial in curating and verifying machine-generated content.
He equally lauded the late Governor Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN) for reviving Sunshine 96.5 FM (Alalaye), a Yoruba-only station that celebrates the language’s beauty across Ondo State, correcting the imbalance created when English was prioritized under the previous administration.
However, this lecture was more than academic discourse; it was a social mirror. It reflected the crisis of language, identity, and inferiority complex in our society.
In today’s Nigeria, many parents boast proudly that their children “don’t speak Yoruba,” as if linguistic amnesia were a mark of civilization. In their misguided race toward modernity, they forget that in Japan, children learn science in Japanese; in Germany, engineering in German; in France, law in French. Only in Africa do we measure success by how far our tongues can twist foreign sounds. We are raising a generation fluent in English but illiterate in their own identity.
This is the painful residue of colonial education, an inheritance that taught us to read and write before it taught us to think. As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o once wrote in Decolonising the Mind, “The bullet was the means of physical subjugation; language was the means of spiritual enslavement.”
No nation builds lasting unity on borrowed tongues. Our inability to trust one another is, in part, a failure of linguistic empathy. We do not understand each other because we do not even speak to each other in our own languages. A true language policy is, therefore, a peace policy. It fosters national cohesion, strengthens democracy, and preserves culture.
The economic argument is equally compelling. The global creative economy; Nollywood, Afrobeats, digital storytelling, thrives on authenticity, not imitation. The global success of Yoruba-language films such as Aníkúlápó proves that the world is hungry for originality. Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa are not barriers to progress; they are exportable treasures in the global cultural market.
Yet, if we fail to document, digitize, and modernize Yoruba, Artificial Intelligence will do it for us, and likely get it wrong. We may soon find Silicon Valley defining our proverbs, distorting our idioms, and misrepresenting our essence. The next frontier of decolonization must, therefore, include digital language preservation.
To revitalize Yoruba, the effort must go beyond universities. Departments of Yoruba should serve as cultural laboratories, producing translators, script consultants, film subtitlers, and content creators. Religious institutions, local radio stations, and public schools should normalize Yoruba usage as part of everyday life, not as an exotic relic reserved for oriki recitations or traditional festivals.
We must also reclaim pride in our linguistic heritage. A child who cannot pray, reason, or dream in their mother tongue has lost something deeper than vocabulary, they have lost connection to their ancestry.
Our ancestors crossed the Atlantic not with English in their mouths but with Yoruba in their souls. Every proverb carried wisdom, every greeting carried respect, every name carried history. To lose that is to lose ourselves.
In the end, “Changing the Change” is more than a lecture title, it is a generational call. It is a reminder that no society advances by abandoning the language of its memory. Yoruba is not dying; it is only waiting, waiting for us to stop apologizing for it and start living through it again.
The question is no longer whether Yoruba has a place in modern society; it is whether modern society still has a place for its own humanity.
_”When we abandon our language, we don’t just lose words, we lose the wisdom, rhythm, and roots that make us who we are.”._
