Nwodosis:
Safe journey

Nwodosis:
Safe journey

johnie:
I didn't know she was that old.

First encountered her when her view on developments in the society used to be sought by NTA.

Thought she was a sociologist.

She will be missed.

johnie:
I didn't know she was that old.

First encountered her when her view on developments in the society used to be sought by NTA.

Thought she was a sociologist.

She will be missed.

MuttleyLaff:
Oh no!
Ka sun re Mama
cc vaxx budaatum

My mum never believed I could become a professor –Sophie Oluwole

Published January 28, 2017

Prof. Sophie Oluwole, 81, is the first Nigerian to bag a PhD in Philosophy. She was a senior lecturer at the University of Lagos and the Chief Executive Officer of Centre for African Culture and Development. In this interview with JESUSEGUN ALAGBE, she talks about her childhood, career and other issues

Some people would tell you that right from childhood, they had dreamt of becoming a so-so person in the future. Did you ever think you would end up becoming a philosopher?

In the universities in Nigeria in those days, Philosophy was not a discipline and when I was a child, even while I was in secondary school, the word ‘philosophy’ could never have occurred to me. The University of Lagos was one of the first universities in Nigeria to start Philosophy. It was even the first. Today, Philosophy is not even taught in secondary school. So, how could I be in primary school and think of becoming something I had never heard before? Ask children in secondary schools, they don’t know the meaning of philosophy. In my time, in the 1940s, you only wanted your children to go to school. It’s not your ambition; it’s your parents’ ambition, and there were only two things they always wanted you to become — a teacher or a pastor. But a woman could not be a pastor, so what a girl could be was a teacher or the wife of a pastor. Apart from those two professions, another person they could want you to become was a nurse. When I was in the modern school at Ile-Ife, Osun State, I wanted to be a nurse. At the end of the first year in the school, we were to go to the hospital to take care of the sick. There was a hospital there, I can’t remember its name but it was established by the Catholic Church. It’s still there; it’s a missionary hospital. So, we went to the hospital and took fruits to give to the sick and we were distributing to them. However, when I saw the really sick people, those who had almost become skeletal, I was so afraid, I was sympathetic. I thought going to the hospital was just to give out drugs and fruits, I didn’t know it was more than that. That day, I knew I was not going to be a nurse again. My next ambition was to be a teacher. Eventually, I became one after going for teachers’ training.




How did you then come about Philosophy later in life?

That’s the greatest accident in my life. I went to the Soviet Union, but I didn’t finish. I came back home to register at the University of Lagos. For the first year, I wanted to study English, Geography and History because I could use my school certificate to do so. But when I wanted to register for English, I was scared away.

Why?

I was told that Wole Soyinka was a teacher there and that among all the students that year, only one person passed. I ran away. So I was left with deciding which other course I needed to add to Geography and History. Because Philosophy had no prerequisite then at UNILAG, I was forced to go there. It wasn’t a matter of choice. So in my first year, I did Geography, History and Philosophy. Unfortunately, I am not a good historian; I don’t remember things easily. So after the first year, I ran away from History. I wanted to go for Geography, but then I had an intention of having a second degree and for you to have a second degree in Geography, you must be good at Mathematics, which I was never taught at the Teachers’ Training College. Finally, I opted for Philosophy. However, there was a problem as there were not enough lecturers there. So I became dubious, I was attending classes at both the departments of Geography and Philosophy, but the lecturers didn’t know. Along the line, the Department of Philosophy got new lecturers. Meanwhile, at the end of each session, every department must submit the names of its students. So, my name appeared on the two departments’ lists. The heads of the two departments started fighting over me. Both were arguing, ‘She’s always coming to my class.’ So I was made to face a trial and choose where I wanted to belong. I told them I was sorry for my action and that I would choose Philosophy. Like I said, I didn’t understand Mathematics and I would need it if I wanted to study Geography. When all is said and done, I felt comfortable with Philosophy.

Since studying Philosophy was by accident and not by choice, did you find fulfilment there?

Well, I cannot say I would have performed better at other courses than I did at Philosophy. If I had gone for History, I would have to rely on so many texts to read, but in Philosophy, my challenge was to look for things to discover. For instance, when I got to Philosophy, I was told that there was nothing like African Philosophy. They said Africans could not think, that we were not thinkers, that we were primitive. I felt challenged and said I was going to find out if truly we could not think. I wanted to prove them wrong. I told them that I had evidence that Africans could think, but they said that because Africans didn’t write down their ideas, that’s why they didn’t have philosophy, and that anything Africans said didn’t make sense. They said we were stupid, we were idiots. When I heard all those words, I felt challenged. When I finished my master’s degree and wanted to go for PhD, they told me I was not going to pass, so I went to Britain. I wanted to determine whether all they said about Africans were true. Luckily, the Yoruba tradition had the largest texts of oral collection called Ifa. Statutorily, they were supposed to have over 4,000 texts, but up till today, they have not registered up to 10, though some people like Bolaji Idowu have started doing that and today they have over 100 texts. All the same, then, there was something that had been recorded, which were oral. I wanted to find out whether what I found was philosophy or not. I then went out and asked the babalawos to read the oral texts that I found, and they all did. Just like how a pastor in the United States and Nigeria would read the same words if they were to read Psalm 23, the babalawo in Ilorin was able to read the same Ifa as the one in Ile-Ife. Eventually, I discovered that what I found in Yoruba tradition was even more philosophical than the ones the Whites had. As a researcher, I discovered many wonderful things. I enjoy being a philosopher.

So you were able to prove wrong those who said Africans could not think eventually?

I did not prove them wrong. I proved to them that Africans are more reasonable, more scientific, and it’s even on record. Yoruba Philosophy is better than Western Philosophy. Yoruba Science is better than theirs. We are better than them. I have met about 10 non-African scholars who told me themselves that Yoruba Philosophy is superior to theirs. Did you know that we are the authors of Quantum Physics? They were talking of Liquid Physics. Their own is that if physics is true, then religion is false, but we believe both of them are true and that’s the foundation of modern science. The African man is now the one teaching science, not just religion. We are better scientists. By the grace of God, I’ll be travelling to America and Europe soon to prove to them that we are more scientific. I want the White man to come here and be begging us to teach them science.




I hope that happens someday…

I hope it will happen. But, the greatest problem in this country is the Ministry of Education. They are still asking us to learn the wrong thing that the White man is doing. How can we understand what is happening in Africa when we are being taught in a foreign language? English Language is compulsory; French is compulsory; but Yoruba Language is not compulsory, Igbo Language is not compulsory. My parents never spoke in English. Orunmila didn’t speak English, and they were all knowledgeable. If you look at the Bible in the Book of Genesis, there’s a place where people were building the Tower of Babel to reach to God in the heaven. God thought those people were going to disturb Him. So He gave them different languages. Did He ask them to be stupid? He gave them their languages so that everyone could say their own. If He wanted us to be using only one language, He wouldn’t have distributed those languages among them. And now, when you pray to Him, doesn’t He answer you no matter what language you are using? Why are we now letting other people say our language is stupid and that we should learn to communicate only in their language? Unfortunately, we do what they say. I think God loves us so much and I have evidence to prove that. We know God more, we know science more, we can cure different diseases.

So despite all these, why are we still living in poverty as a race?

There is a saying in Yoruba that some people, through their ignorance, have thrown away the salient elements of their culture. It’s because we have become a dumping ground for waste. That is what our educational system is. We believe that we don’t know anything, so the schools are built according to the Western style. All the books we are using in Nigeria, where do they come from? I was at the University of Ibadan Library sometime ago and I was told that 86 per cent of the books there were from Britain. Who are the owners of the ideas? Where is our own? We are still being colonised, mentally enslaved. We don’t have anything about Ifa or Orunmila again. We are religious, we have thrown away our own, we are stupid. Today in Nigeria, we all go to church, only to suffer. They would tell us to fast and pray every day. The Ghanaians said, ‘If we want yam, we need to go to the farm.’ In traditional Africa, nobody would ask you not to work. I remember these words in my school, ‘Work and pray.’ But today, even if you don’t work, the pastors would tell you to pray for blessing. I don’t know the meaning of that. In my house now, they don’t allow me sleep at all. There’s vigil every now and then. God Himself worked for six straight days and rested on the seventh day. But we are praying every day and not working. The prayers they are praying, how would God answer them if they don’t work? We are enslaved. I remember the late Tai Solarin. He was ready to go to jail because the Whites caught him with ‘ogogoro.’ They said it was illegal. What’s the meaning of ‘illegal’ here? You are making gin; I’m also making it. Must I buy your own? They said it was impure. Then, purify it. In those days, our people were making dry gin. There might have been impurities there, but even in the ones made in London, there were impurities. All the White man needed to do was to encourage us, but they wouldn’t do so. I remember there’s a river in Ibadan called ‘Omi Majedun.’ Small girls would be selling our local gin along the river, but whenever they sighted the police, they would jump into the river to evade arrest. Why? We are from Ondo. I remember my father once told me of a town near River Niger where they used to make iron. When they brought bicycles to Nigeria in the 1920s, the people in the town made their own bicycles. They made everything and the only thing they had to buy were the tyres. Then they started arresting them. They said they violated the copyright laws. But my father said the Igbo man was a clever man. They started mixing both imported and local materials in making the bicycles. When they were arrested again, they told the British that their bicycles spoilt and that’s why they used their materials. But it’s a sad story today. Since our Independence, why have we not started making bicycles again in Nigeria? It’s an insult that we’re still importing. If we had been making bicycles here, by now we would have started manufacturing cars. Why are we not promoting indigenous technology? Please note that that there’s no technology in the world that is the sole right of anybody. The Chinese copied the West, they are now making cars. The Japanese copied. Nobody reinvented the wheel. Look around you. Tell me anything we’re making here. We’re mentally enslaved. I went to the Soviet Union in 1963. When you travelled out of the Soviet Union and you were returning, they would strip you naked. Anything you bought from the West, they would ask you to discard it. Whatever they gave us that was made in the Soviet Union was what we used. I remember the first washing machine my husband and I bought then, when the thing was washing your clothes, it would tear them off. When we complained, they said they were sorry and that they would improve on it. Why are we not like that? I think it was sometime last year that it was reported that soldiers discovered 17 places where crude oil was being refined in the country. Tell me, what did they do? They demolished the illegal refineries. If I were the government, I would arrest the owners for not getting licence, but I would never have destroyed what they did. I remember very well that when the civil war ended in 1970, there was an underground industry where shotguns were being made. They were better than the ones made in Britain. Should we have destroyed the industry? The Igbo man was making weapons during the war. After the war, should you have stopped him? Every nation would develop according to its own efforts, not by another man’s. We are not yet free. What do our students learn in classrooms? Nothing. To develop, we have to look inside, but I’m not saying we should be blind to the outside world. Most of the developed countries of the world, they have no oil palm, no mineral resources, nothing, and they are developed. Israel has no land to plant, but they transplanted soil and plant in the space. We have land, what are we doing? We are committing suicide. Before my time, children were not taken to school, but by age 17, they were given lands to farm. They must do something. Women learned to weave, sow or do other things. Today, they all go to school and all they get is a paper, which is called certificate. Does it qualify you to do anything? If you are not qualified, you are useless. I used to tell my graduating students when I was a senior lecturer, ‘Congratulations to you. Now that you have BSc (Hons) in Philosophy, what does it qualify you to do?’ Our education doesn’t qualify us to do things. What is the sheet of paper doing for us?

You are saying we should restructure our education system?

We should restructure our education system. Those who want to become farmers should become so. There was a boy who graduated from UNILAG sometime ago and what he did after school was planting vegetables. His mates thought he was mad. He told some secondary school boys to come to his farm after school hours and he was paying them. He would then package the vegetables and go from bank to bank, selling them to busy banker women. After a year, he bought a car. Education should teach you how to earn a living. There was another girl who came to me when she was graduating that I should advise her on what to do after graduation. I said she should go and learn how to make “adire” clothes. She said I was not being serious. A week later, she came back to me for enquiries on “adire” making. I told her she should go to Abeokuta and that when she got there, she should not say she was a graduate. I said she should tell them that she lost her parents at a young age and she wanted to be an apprentice. Second, I said she was likely to meet another apprentice who was younger and less educated. She should treat the girl like her boss. If the young girl told her to go and buy food for her, she should go. If she could do that, she would learn a lot. They would teach her so many patterns and later she would be able to make her own designs. After a year, the girl came to my office. I couldn’t recognise her. She was wearing a very lovely dress that I admired. She said, ‘Mummy, don’t you know me again?’ She had been going from office to office in the city and selling her clothes. She came in her car. Education is to make you know what to do. We are teaching our children Physics, Chemistry and the rest, but we are not telling them what to do with those subjects later in life. When I graduated, I had appointments from three schools. With your PhD now, who is going to employ you among thousands of those who have what you have? We have to restructure our education.

There is a notion that in those days, female children were not being allowed to go to school. Why is your case different?

Let me tell you some history. Ibadan is one of the big cities in Yorubaland where missionaries David and Anna Hinderer of the Anglican Church started a school called St. David’s in 1855. Alongside St. David’s was Kudeti Girls’ School. The man went from house to house, telling families to bring their children to school. Almost all families gave them both male and female children. The boy would go to St. David’s while the girl would go to Kudeti. Their syllabuses were different. The boy would study Physics, Chemistry and the rest, while the girl would study cooking, weaving, etc. When both of them graduated, work was always available for the male to do, but nothing for the female. David did this because in Britain, women were not allowed to work. They said the place of women was in the kitchen. So when our girls said they wanted to work, they would tell them to go and find a husband, either a pastor or a catechist. It was a result of this that Nigerian fathers said if the place of the woman was in the kitchen, why should they be sending them to school?

Are you saying it was the Whites who brought the culture of the women’s place being in the kitchen?

Yes. They were the ones. It wasn’t our tradition for women not to work. In our tradition, women were told to learn what they wanted to do. Both men and women were working. It was in Europe that a woman was not allowed to work. Let me tell you something shocking. When the Whites came to Lagos, the richest person was Madam [Efunroye] Tinubu (1810–1887). Was she not a woman? How could she have become rich if she was not allowed to work? But the Whites said they could not do business with a woman. Madam Tinubu had 400 men working under her. Can you believe that? She had trading businesses in 70 countries outside Nigeria, as a woman. The Whites told our men, ‘You are very stupid. How could you allow a woman to be richer than you?’ They drove her away from Lagos; they also drove away the rich women who were in Ibadan and Onitsha. They said African men were very stupid by allowing women to be their boss. They said women were supposed to be in the kitchen. You see, the Whites are more primitive than us. Our women are hardworking. For instance, go to the market, women are more than men. And where do you make money most? Is it not from the market? It’s only in the North that men sell in the market. But an average Yoruba man would never sell tomatoes in the market. That’s why we have the title of “Iyaloja,” not “Babaloja.” So it’s not our tradition that women are supposed to be in the kitchen. Both men and women are to work to complement each other in the home. The African man and woman are clever. I was told that a particular man went to Britain and wanted to start a church. When filling the registration form, he used his wife and his name. They said it was not possible. In Nigeria, what do you see? You would see the picture of the pastor and his wife on the signpost. That’s our culture. We complement ourselves. Tell me one church in Britain that bears the name of the man and woman. This is one thing we have to put in our educational system, telling our children of the complementary roles of the man and woman. In fact, women are even stronger. But for the White man, the woman is nothing.

It seems some of our wrong notions are even from the West…

That’s why we should fight against the indoctrination of the Whites. Every wrong notion we have today is from there. They are our problem and yet we copy everything they do. It’s unfortunate. They disrupted our culture. In Britain, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan once said when he was there, no woman was allowed to study medicine. If she wanted to do it, they would say she should be taken to the psychiatric hospital, that she had mental problem. Why should we say a particular job is for men and another for women when both can do it? Did you know there are better female hunters than the male in Yorubaland? Who said only men can hunt? Let anyone — whether a male or female — who has the capacity to do something do it. A story was told of a woman, pretending to be a man, who came from Europe to South Africa in those days. That was the first time she saw women performing Caesarian Section in her life. We in Africa are more advanced. They are more primitive than us.

Being the last born of your mother, were you spoilt while growing up?

My father had three wives. My mother had eight children, but she lost four. The one before me is six years older. I was not spoiled, but I was a bad girl. When I mean bad, it is in the sense of laziness. I was lazy. I remember very well that every day we used to eat pounded yam. So when they were boiling yam and it was almost time to pound, I would go to the bush, pretending that I was going to the toilet. It was when I heard my two sisters pounding that I would come out. My mother would look at me and keep quiet. When it was time for her to serve, she would serve all others first and then she would give me very little. I would refuse to take the food and then she would remind me that when they were pounding, I ran to the bush. She would scold me. It was my father who would come to my rescue and give me money to go and buy cold pap. My mother would complain that he was spoiling me. So it was my father who even wanted to spoil me. However, when I left primary school and went to Ile-Ife, I was living in a boarding house. There, we were the ones to cook for ourselves. There was no way I could run away to the bush. One day during the holiday, I went home and asked my mother what we were going to eat and that I would cook it. She could not believe it. I told her, ‘Mummy, bring beans, let me make ‘akara’ (bean cake) for you.’ She was surprised. One day, she told me, ‘I regret you are the last child. If I had another daughter, I would send her to that school where they are teaching you how to prepare food.’ So I was not spoiled, but I was lazy to the extent that my mother told me that I was going to be a prostitute, because then, only lazy girls were prostitutes. Thank God I did not become a prostitute. Boarding school made me a strong woman.

Who is your favourite among the world’s greatest philosophers?

I cannot say I love any person most, but I think I love Socrates, not because I love his words, but I love his methods. Socrates never said he was a philosopher. He was only used to asking questions. When you told Socrates anything, he would ask questions. He never said anything he said was correct, but he would tell you how you were wrong if you told him you were clever. And you know where he used to sit? In the market. He didn’t say he was the wisest man. That’s how I came across Orunmila. All the people around him would say they were clever, they were wise. So one day, he was sitting in his house and Ogun went to his house. Ogun was a very strong man as he was a warrior. When he got to Orunmila’s place, he was showed a room full of shiny iron weapons. Ogun asked Orunmila who owned those weapons. Orunmila said, ‘Somebody gave them to me and I don’t need them.’ Ogun asked, ‘Can I take them away?’ Orunmila replied, ‘Yes, you can because you know how to use them. But before you take them, let us play ‘ayo’.’ So they played ‘ayo’ three times. By the time Ogun wanted to carry the weapons, everything had rusted and he asked Orunmila, ‘Are you so dishonest? You showed me new weapons now and now they have rusted.’ Orunmila replied, ‘So if you buy new weapons, are they not going to become rust? And you said you know everything, yet you don’t know that every shiny iron would end up rusted.’ Ogun left. Another person went to Orunmila and saw a beautiful girl of about 18 years old in a room. That one asked Orunmila, ‘Baba, who is this girl?’ Orunmila said, ‘Her mother brought her here. She is not married yet and I don’t want to marry her.’ The man asked Orunmila, ‘Can I marry her? How much will I pay?’ Orunmila said yes, but that they should play ‘ayo’ first. After the game, he went to take the girl. But this time around, he saw an old woman, the eyes had gone inside and the teeth were all gone. The man told Orunmila, ‘Baba, this is not the woman I saw now.’ Orunmila replied, ‘So if you marry her, wouldn’t she become old? The problem with you people is that you think things are going to be permanent.’ When Ogun and the rest of the community saw the wisdom of Orunmila, they all came and said they were going to worship him. Orunmila said, ‘No, I never said I know anything. I just wanted to show you that you don’t know everything. The only person who knows everything is God.’ That’s the end of it. So, Socrates and Orunmila were similar. Both of them didn’t declare that they were the wisest. But in my view, Orunmila is still better than Socrates.

Zanas:

Hey are you not the one who has been telling us that all american leaders are homosexuals , which one is aeon of sango again? Oya explain fast!!! Your posts can be very creepy

johnie:
I didn't know she was that old.

First encountered her when her view on developments in the society used to be sought by NTA.

Thought she was a sociologist.

She will be missed.