I think back often to when I spent most of my time on this blog, writing about everything that caught my fancy. Granted, this was when I was a grad school student, with days filled with adventure, youthful exuberance, travels, classroom experiences, and all manner of observations. At some point, I published twice a day. Good days. These days, I’m babysitting a two-year-old, when the ten-year-old is in school, and managing to squeeze my own reading and writing in-between.
Today, I got an email from our publisher that the sophomore edition of Best Literary Translations anthology will soon be in print, and we’d soon get our galley/complimentary copies. Yes, this is the first time I’m mentioning the book here so a little background is helpful.
One of my favourite things about the publication is the number of wonderful guest-editors we get to work with. The first edition had Jane Hirshfield, the second edition had Cristina Rivera Garza, and the 2026 edition, which we’ve begun work on, will be guest-edited by Arthur Sze.
When I am done with this blog, I will start reading my own pile of entries for the 2026 edition.
So, what was I saying earlier? I miss writing here, and I hope to fix that in 2025. And why did I stop earlier? Overthinking, perhaps. Twitter? The craziness of the last years? Or a desire for something new. I did write and direct a documentary film last year, after all. And before that, in 2023, I was neck deep in some research project that became YorùbáVoice. In 2022, I moved countries, welcomed a new child, and hoped to spend more time in the United States so I can complete a number of book projects, one of which became my second collection Èṣù at the Library, and the other which became An African Abroad. 2021 was the pandemic, and so on. I also continue to work at OlongoAfrica, a platform I founded in 2020 to curate some literary, research, and translation projects on the continent; and at FlamingHydra, a subscription platform I co-own, where I also manage to continue to write.
Anyway, enough excuses. Let’s see how much this new year resolution holds.
On the last Sunday of 2024, I hosted an event at the J. Randle Centre in Lagos, a newly opened and appropriately named “Centre for Yorùbá Culture and History.”
The well-attended event was a screening of Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory, a new documentary film I wrote and directed, which examines the story of Wọlé Ṣóyínká as a young academic at the University of Ìbàdàn in the early sixties, and all the many implications of his stay there — and the house where he lived — on the Nigerian story and the conversation around memory, trauma, and legacy.
The movie was first screened in July 2024, and has travelled around the world, winning three film festival awards, and earning a dozen other official selections and shortlists. It has screened in many important places in Nigeria, including the Alliance Francaise Mike Adénúgà Centre, the Muson Centre, the University of Ìbàdàn, University of Lagos, Korean Cultural Centre Abuja, and many more. We always wanted it to return to The J. Randle Centre particularly because Ṣóyínká had mentioned it as the permanent home to some of his carvings collections which took a central role in the film, and for other personal reasons.
My relationship with the Centre dates back to its early conception — at least as early as 2016 or so — when Ṣeun Odùwọlé, a visionary architect, first showed up at my office at Google to discuss his burning idea for a visually-appealing museum of world status at that location that already held enormous historical significance for Lagos. The space was at the time a pile of debris, walled off from the neigbourhood after the demolition of the earlier structures and the famous swimming pool. Odùwọlé had secured the cooperation of the then administration of Governor Akínwùnmí Aḿbọ̀dé and other international partners to create something much more than a recreation centre: A Yorùbá Centre that would house the heritage of a people, and show a more competent presentation of history than the National Museum across the road belonging to the federal government.
I was enarmored by the idea, but much more by Odùwọlé’s zeal, vision, and ambition. Not much of any of the promised funds and support had materialized at the time, but the concepts were present on his computer, with images of what the building would look like, and what an experience of visiting the future Centre would look like, combining traditional curatorial practice with modern technology. I shared some of my ideas and promised personal cooperation. I visited for the first time in 2019 to see the construction taking shape. Some photos below from March 2019.
We kept in touch over the years, and as the idea grew. And when a team was put in place to design the curatorial materials for the Centre, I joined more formally, working with scholars across the world like Jacob Olúpọ̀nà, Will Rea, Rowland Abíọ́dún, and dozens of others, to put important ideas about Yorùbá identity in black and white for the future website. The texts would be in English and Yorùbá, with the latter taking a more prominent role. I worked with Odùwọlé to procure rare books and materials for the museum, and led the translation of all relevant texts between languages. While supervising the construction of the site, Ṣeun continued his networking tasks of keeping important partners across the world to their promise. The Lander Stool, for instance, was one of the items he unofficially secured for a permanent loan/return to the museum.
The work on the texts took months of research and editing, and finally the work was done. Even the signage and instructions at the Centre was to be written in both Yorùbá and English, as befitting such an important representation of culture. You can see the result in the architectural design of the screening venue: Yorùbá town names designed and well tone-marked forming a natural frosting on the glass.
And then things went quiet.
Through the defeat of Governor Aḿbọ̀dé in the 2018 primary of the APC and the emergence of a new governor in the person of Babájídé Sanwóolú, the work at the Randle Centre seemed to have stalled. It was no longer clear if it would proceed at all, or whether the commitment of the state to it would last beyond one administration. Even the idea of the centre as an independent custodian of culture working only with the state as a major partner seemed doomed. Politics, it appeared, had emerged to scuttle what had promised to be a departure from such typical Nigerian malaise.
In the intervening period, the transition between two administrations seemed to also lead to a transition for Odùwọlé, who had conceived and brought the idea to life through grit, hard work, and what I know to be an individual obsession. Such that when the Centre officially opened in 2024 finally, after having stayed locked for two years since its commissioning by the Head of State Buhari, the vision that brought the project to life was conspicuously missing. The website that had been created and curated with enormous research efforts had been allowed to lapse, and the only thing left was a building structure which, though still impressive in its design, content, and presentation, continued to need more intentional curatorial and intellectual handling.
With embarrassing events like this recent ‘invasion’ of the property by the state’s Commissioner of Culture confronting the centre’s appointed CEO for some inscrutable lack of deference [later explained as the establishment of an unauthorized business on the premises], it’s obvious that The J. Randle Centre needs proper intervention to make it live up to its founding ideals if it were to survive. There are sufficient examples of projects with ambitious goals like this failing because of a lack of proper structure and management system. And there are projects with far smaller budgets across the world which have been used to great success as generators of revenue and celebration of national heritage.
The architect Ṣeun Odùwọlé (R) in March 2019, showing guests around his work.
In this case, it is important for the Lagos State Government to provide answers to a number of important questions now arising:
Whether the J. Randle Centre is a private event centre or a public one. Whether the state intends to continue to run it directly (through the commissioner) or via proxy. Which is more efficient, and why?
How much the state is currently running the Centre with, and to which directions — including whether the state investment is bringing sufficient returns.
Into which pocket the monies paid by visitors to use and visit the centre go, and how are they accounted for?
Why a fully-transparent management board hasn’t been convened through which the Commisioner and members of the public can get answers to any questions they have without resorting to such a public spectacle as we saw today.
Smarter people than me continue to add important points to the conversation via twitter. You can see them here, here and here. There seems to be a consensus that a more formal professional management board is sorely needed, and urgently, so as to elevate the place beyond another failed government edifice many of which already litter the land. In 2025, we need not continue to fall victim to “the Nigerian factor” in the area of arts and public engagement. We have seen how it’s done elsewhere — and they don’t have two heads. A better way forward is certainly needed.
In the culture I grew up in, you were trained to look out for a signal from God, nature, the gods or whatever (you choose) especially when you are making and taking a serious decision. My move to Toulouse (Midi-Pyrenees), a southern city in France was one of such decisions I needed to consider carefully. I had been studying in Houghton Michigan for a few years, so it felt like a needed a new adventure.
With friends in downtown Toulouse
As a Nigerian, I needed a visa to live and work in France. My visa got approved so I took that as a good sign only for me to miss my flight on the day of departure because I had overslept having spent the previous night doing some last-minute packing for the trip. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I almost got on the flight out of the little old town I lived in the following day although I arrived late again. But alas, I was told that the flight attendant would be needing my seat as hers was damaged so “we’re sorry you can’t get on the flight, but you might still be able to fly out to Chicago from a neighboring city.” I was angry, confused and wondered why life had to be so unfair! My dear friend who dropped me off at the airport had left, but luckily enough I got a ride back home from a stranger. Did I mention that the neighboring city was almost 4hrs away? We made it to Central Wisconsin Airport, Wausau in good time for my flight. Upon arriving in Chicago, I thought to myself, “now you are finally on your way to France.” However, I was told by Aer Lingus Airlines that I needed a transit visa to travel through Ireland which I didn’t have thanks to my travel agent who thought that I was American 😊. My world almost came crashing down, I couldn’t believe that the ‘village people’ (a Nigerian term for negative spiritual forces) were still trying to come after me. I didn’t burst out crying but I shed a tear or two as I walked away from the airlines counter at O’Hare airport. I made some calls and the situation got fixed. My sponsors had to buy me a new flight and this time, I would be travelling through Germany and not Ireland. I thought that I might avoid Ireland for a while, little did I know that an Irish man was waiting for me in Toulouse.
At place du Capitole
On August 26, 2019, I arrived in Toulouse. It was a warm evening, the airport was moderately busy considering the time of the day it was, French was flowing all around me, but I couldn’t swim in it. That was when it suddenly dawned on me that I had set myself up for something wild. I boarded the tram from la aéroport to Palais de justice. From there, I got a bus to my final destination. Right from when I arrived my broken French was tested, and I also pushed my luck because in my imagination most French people should understand some English expressions so I should be just fine. How wrong was I? The lady who directed me to the bus stop at Palais de justice had been on the tram with me, a young French-Arabic who spoke no words of English but still bothered to speak French to me and used a lot of gestures. Someone else who spoke English on the tram had explained my ordeal to her and so my co French-Arabic passenger had taken it upon herself to help me. I was glad for their kindness but frustrated as I could see a glimpse of what the life of an Anglophone might look like here.
From day 2 in France, google translate became my best buddy. I listened to the voice translation and practiced expressions ahead of a potential interaction in French. Every so often, I blurted out “Tu parles anglais?” Or “Vous parlez anglais s’il vous plaît?” (in a formal context) = Do you speak English? Hoping to be transported back into my Anglophone world. My cliche expression worked sometimes but not nearly enough to make me let my hair down.
A few days upon my arrival, when I showed up for work, my hopes were renewed because my team was made up of native English speakers. Once again, I could express myself freely without feeling inept. Work turned out to be my safe haven since my job was to speak and teach English. The experienced members of my team were very helpful in guiding me and the other newbies into the expatriate resources in Toulouse. The word expatriate had never been associated with me but now as a Nigerian studying in America, I was considered as an expatriate in France where I was offering my English communication skills to French university students. I joined different English-speaking community groups on Facebook, such groups were a constant reminder that many people out there were trying to figure out the French system just like me and I didn’t feel all alone.
The reality of English language in France
Pont Saint- Pierre
The truth is, France is a rich country that educates its citizens entirely in French at all levels of education but can also afford to teach students English starting from primary school. However, many students do not get the opportunity to use and practice their English beyond the classroom so many of them are not likely to improve their English skill to a comfortable intermediate level. Except for kids who were raised bilingual (often with one English parent, or kids of English origin living in France). A good question to ask is why should the average French person care about the English language when they have all that they need available to them in French? A lot of resources are pumped into translation efforts in the French society. Many books, novels, journals, movies, news gets translated into French. Furthermore, prolific dubbing of French over English digital materials makes Grey’s Anatomy (the dubbed version) readily available on TV. I once turned on the TV, saw Johnny Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean was being aired, only for me to hear some strange voice when Johnny Depp was supposedly speaking. That was when I realized that it was the dubbed version. Another time, I walked into a lovely librairie (bookstore), in Montauban (a neighbouring town from Toulouse). This store was well furnished with print, digital and multimedia resources of various genres, of course all in French. It was fascinating to see the French version of some novels written by Nigerian authors.
English is used in addition to French
Despite the large number of English speakers in major cities like Paris, Lyon,Toulouse, Bordeaux, Marseille etc. The English as a Foreign Language (EFL) status undermines the visibility of English in the French society. One might expect that major companies and businesses would have English services just like services in Spanish is a norm in the USA but that is not the case. As an Anglophone, I get lucky every once in a while, when I come across a service provider who is willing to use their English. It doesn’t help that there is a subtle resistance to the English language and in some cases overt resistance. For example, Académie Française is responsible for keeping the French language updated and relevant. They constantly work on metalanguage, hoping to reduce the influence of English on French. The interesting thing is that the English language has borrowed so much from French, the two languages even share some cognates. For this reason, faux amis (literally meaning false friends) is a challenge for English speakers learning French and vice-versa. Yourdictionary.com defines faux amis as “one of a pair of words in different languages or dialects that look related but differ significantly in meaning. Some common examples are jolly in English and jolie (pretty), medicine and médecin (doctor), actually and actuellement (at present) among others.
Picnic by the garonne
For sure, English seems to thrive in the French advertisement channels especially in print ads and display ads with English words embedded in them, English phrases somehow find their way into advertisements. Many young French people love English movies. They are quick to mention Neftlix when you ask how they have been working to progress their English skills. The problem is Netflix feeds you movies that do not necessarily engage you. I suggested to a few students that a better way to get more out of Netflix was to see an English movie and then talk to someone about it in English or even write about it in English. In the language acquisition process listening comes before speaking, so you can watch a foreign movie with or without subtitles if you’ve got some level of competence in it and understand most of the storyline. The actors’ gestures as well as other actions or movements you see give you a hint of what’s happening.
The Attitude
At Asa’s concert
The general attitude towards the English language is positive among the young people (especially students since they have to learn it at school anyway) Interestingly, the Macron administration seem pro-English such that the President has been criticized for embracing “English too much.” For instance, the President Macron tweets in English when abroad, grants interviews in English which offends the French language purists. In fact, the French language conservatives believe that the English language is a big threat to the French Language. Afterall, the English language has been called ‘the killer language’ by some Linguists. This fear of French going into extinction is outrageous in my opinion considering that it is a language spoken by about 300 million people (mostly in Africa), serves as the official language in 29 countries and is the sixth most widely spoken language in the world after Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish and Arabic. Maybe this fear keeps the French on their toes and gives them a reason to continue to perpetuate language imperialism or do some people call that globalization? 😉
The fact that some universities in France offer programs in English, such as an MBA program among others is undoubtedly a friendly gesture to encourage Anglophone students in France. But what is the point not being unemployable upon completing one’ studying and because of deficiency in French language? This has been the experience of several students The pickup line is that you can study in private universities in English, but no one tells you your lack of French will lead to no “good” except you plan to leave the country immediately after your studies. Honestly, graduates in Engineering or STEM fields have higher chances of getting jobs that doesn’t require speaking French.
Portraying a positive attitude towards English language
Conclusion
With colleagues at an Ethiopian restaurant
France is culturally rich, has a diverse immigrant population and stands as an imperial force in the world today. My appreciation for good cuisine or gastronomy, nature and openness to pets increased from living and experiencing the French way of life. I enjoy baguette, croissant nature but not chocolatine a specialty in Toulouse because I am not a chocolate person. Now, I can properly ask to buy something at the boulangerie without being corrected for wrong grammar – I now say “bonjour, une baguette s’il vous plait and not un baguette ☺ I have also learned about the galettes du fête among other French food and pastry traditions.
Living in Toulouse has helped me reflect on questions like who has the privilege of resisting a (foreign) language, as in the case of English in France. Many people around the world never learn to read and write their mother tongue because of scarce resources but globalization order ensures that some countries remain wealthy while others scramble for leftovers from the wealthy ones. France continues to reassert her dominant power structure and culture on its residents both directly and indirectly. Who is to blame? Those who succumb to linguistic oppression like me? Another thing is does merely speaking the French language make one French?
I consider myself privileged to have my level of education and access to opportunities allowing me to master the English language (especially the Nigerian variant). With my international exposure and education, I have observed the fascinating nature of other Englishes like the American, Indian, Ghanaian, British among others. In the same way, I have been exposed to varieties of French dialects and accents from the Caribbean or French Islands, Africa, Italy, Latin America. These varieties have become music to my ears since I am only aware of the mixed melodies but can’t really join in the conversation and interact casually with strangers except in simple sentences. This loss of meaningful interaction, feelings of isolation when surrounded by people speaking, laughing out their hearts be it at the park, the busy streets of downtown Toulouse, or on the metro sends my mind to translation mode especially if I am perceiving connected speech which I struggle to catch up with so that the rhythm around me brings a longing of the faraway atmosphere that I once knew- what home was felt like, at least the romanticized version. In spite of the daunting disconnect due to the language barrier, my love for language keeps me motivated to learn French, thanks to my companion Duolingo. Living in a Francophone country as an Anglophone made me realize that being fluent in three languages may not be enough, it just depends on where you find yourself. My multilingual identity is submerged by my baby French level. What is the point of language without the freedom to rap out your soul, say something pressing on your mind, engage in and with your community, feel heard, help out a lost stranger on the street etc?
__________
Tolulope Odebunmi is a communications strategist, a trained linguist and an educationist from Toulouse, France. Her interests include geopolitics and globalization, development issues and popular culture. She was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) at Michigan State University, USA. She enjoys learning, travelling and problem solving.
This was written in early 2020 and it was never published — in part because of the global pandemic that started shortly after, but mostly because it was supposed to be a private record of my trip to learn a bit more about the state of libraries and documentation in my country while I worked as a research fellow at the British Library in London. I’d always been fascinated by libraries and their role in the preservation and reinforcement of culture and history (Here’s one of my last visits to the best small library in America in 2010) so working at the BL brought many of my questions and curiosities to the fore. I went back to Nigeria to connect some dots that hadn’t yet made sense. I found the report in my drafts yesterday and I realised that it does stand alone as an important record. Still not satisfactory of all the queries I had then, it remains important as a guidepost to anyone else interested in the issues. Also, since then there have been some new private efforts in documentation in Nigeria, one of which is Archivi.ng, which gives me hope for the future.
***
I spent much of my time in Lagos between February 12 to March 1, 2020, learning about the library and archival culture in Nigeria. Until my fellowship began last September, I did not even know that there was a National Library in Nigeria, where it was located, or whether it was accessible for use. This was partly because I never looked, and also because — if it existed — enough work hadn’t been done to make citizens aware.
When I was in high school, the closest ‘library’ around me was a private one, run by the Association of Reproductive and Family Health (ARFH) which owned the building in which it was located. They had made contact with my school as a way of introducing teenagers to information about reproductive health. So after school, we went to the building, where we could borrow books, spend some time in the reading rooms, join reproductive health clubs, and participate in a number of activities that complemented our learning in school. If there were public libraries in Ìbàdàn at the time — and my knowledge now shows that there were — I had no idea. At least in Ìbàdàn, there is a state library, a publicly funded library open to everyone. But it was centrally located and far from where my school was.
But on return to Lagos this February, I was more interested in learning about the National Library, which I believed would be the equivalent of the British Library in the UK — an organisation which collected all the books published in the country, which ostensibly had a record of all the books that have ever been published, had accessible reading rooms, and served about the same purpose as the BL does in the UK.
Through social media, I found that there was an office located in Yaba in Lagos. So I drove there on February 21. It was located off Herbert Macaulay Road, in an alcove that made it easy to miss from the main road. Even the sign had been obstructed by a half-broken fence and an electric pole. Still, there it was. The compound was big enough to allow for parking. The building itself was spacious and the visit looked promising. Outside, by the fence, were a couple of students reading on small tables.
At the National Library branch in Lagos
On my way in, I noticed shelves and cupboards placed outside, and in positions that suggested that some renovation was going on. This would be confirmed later. The Library was out of service on this day. Some renovation was going on that would not be complete for a few weeks. So only a few skeletal services were available. Even the director was not around. But I found two officers who would speak to me and answer some of my questions.
One of the things I was curious about was Legal Deposit, the law that mandates that every book published in the country be sent to the National Library for keeping and archiving. I knew, by having read up on it (some links are online here, here, and here), that the law existed in Nigeria, but I didn’t know how it worked on the ground. I was also curious about how it was being implemented.
In Nigeria, the law mandates at least three copies of books to be sent to the National Library in the state where the book was published. There are 27 branches of the National Library though more are being considered for the other states. The plan, according to the person who attended to me, was to have a branch in each of the 36 states in Nigeria. These three copies are then sent from the local branch to Abuja, the headquarters, where a bibliographic record is made, after which one of the copies of the book is retained in Abuja, one is sent to the Kenneth Dike Library at the University of Ìbàdàn, while the final one is sent randomly to any one of the 27 branches around the country.
The Nigerian Legal Deposit law, it seems, stems from the fact that the Nigerian National Library is also the source of all ISBN numbers issued for books about to be published. This is not the same in the UK. So maybe the thinking is that publishers hoping to continue to get ISBN numbers will hold up their own part of the bargain by continuing to send in published books as required by law. I was surprised to find that, in spite of this, there are still some publishers who either forget or choose not to send in their required legal deposit. The woman who spoke to me said that there are some enforcement mechanisms to take care of this. Visits are often made to these publishers to remind them of their responsibilities.
So, because copies sent to the branches are selected randomly, no branch in the country has all the titles published that year. And none can boast of having copies even of the books published in the state. I found it interesting. I was also fascinated by the new discovery that the library in my alma mater, the University of Ìbàdàn — called Kenneth Dike Library — had copies of all the books published in the country since the establishment of the National Library in 1964 or even earlier. The suggestion was that even colonial legal deposit materials would be there. And so I arranged to visit it. But I was also interested in visiting the Ìbàdàn branch of the National Library, if only to compare the services, the environment, and the structure. I was also interested in at least making a connection, for the British Library, with the curators there.
At the National Library Branch in Ìbàdàn
The Ìbàdàn branch of the Library is at Iyaganku, across from the Customary Court of Appeals. It had a wider compound. The building used to be a residential house for one of the country’s earliest leaders and politicians. It was said that Anthony Enahoro once lived there. Even the compound of the Customary Court once hosted the second Premier of the Western Region, Chief Ládòkè Akíntọ́lá, who was murdered there during the first coup d’etat in January of 1966.
On the fence on my way in was the poster for an event that happened many months earlier inviting the general public for a sensitization workshop “on Legal Deposit Compliance and ISBN & ISSN” Inside, after parking, I got in, and met a number of workers there who showed me the reading rooms, the storage rooms, and answered a number of questions I had about the challenges they have with running the place, attitudes of users, the state of libraries in Nigeria, and other things. They also asked me about the British Library, what I did there, and how to better create a collaboration between the two institutions.
The director wasn’t around on this day either, so I arranged to return, especially after seeing Kenneth Dike Library in Ìbàdàn.
At Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ìbàdàn.
KDL, as we often called it, is as old as the university itself. I had spent some time there as an undergraduate between 2000 and 2005. I just hadn’t known that it was also a library of archival records. Its role as a repository for all legal deposit materials was a revelation that I was interested in exploring.
Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ìbàdàn
I secured a meeting with the Head Librarian for a conversation. There was a strike action of non-Academic staff on the day I went there on February 25th, so she had some free time. We talked for almost an hour, some of which were productive. Mostly, she appeared either unfamiliar with the role of the Library as a legal depository for books from the National Library, or not understanding of my questions and follow-ups about where exactly one could find those books. The focus of the Library, she said, was on academic publications. Acquisitions are done only for publications that would help the students and professors in their research. All other materials — including fiction, history, or other “irrelevant” ones — are regularly pruned from the shelves to make way for these important ones. She also did not know much about colonial legal deposits, which I had been told at the Iyaganku branch of the National Library should also be in the holdings of the Kenneth Dike Library.
After a generally unhelpful conversation, I proceeded downstairs to speak to someone she had recommended had sufficient knowledge. This was Seun Obasola, who happened to have been my predecessor at the British Library as the Chevening Research Fellow. If the last hour had been frustrating, the next three were the opposite. Obasola, who had worked at the Library for over ten years, knew its ins and outs. She knew that KDL was, indeed, a repository for legal deposit materials from Abuja (and had an idea of where I could find them). She also admitted the already obvious fact that many people who currently work in, and occupy high administrative positions in, the Library might not always be the most knowledgeable about the location of many of its holdings. She pointed to me the storage areas where many archival and historical materials belonging to the Library from way back were stored, sometimes in terrible conditions. She is currently applying for an EAP grant to catalogue and digitize some of them. The sad fact, she said, was that there was just too much, and too little manpower. Thus, over time, materials just get piled up with no one knowing where they are or what to do with them. More funding, and more manpower would be very helpful. Not helped, also, is the fact that she herself was just about to begin another two-year fellowship in Canada, which may take her even farther from a place that needed her competence so badly.
Inside the KDL
It was a delight to hear that the catalogue records of KDL — at least of the materials that have been found and properly stored — was almost all available online through the online public access catalogue. Like the BLExplore page, one could search for any item in the KDL catalogue even without being on the physical premises. This is not the same for the Nigerian National Library, where manual cardboard catalogues are still being used. I was told that the Abuja office had an electronic record, but it just wasn’t online. It seemed unhelpful to think of a national library without a nationally-accessible catalogue, but that’s where we currently are. I have harboured the hope of one day meeting with the National Librarian, Professor Lenrie Ọlátòkunbọ̀ Àìná, whom I have been told is a progressive-leaning administrator, to discuss these questions.
The Biggest Issues
It seems, from my experience during this visit, that the biggest issues in public library administration are funding allocation and management.
The 2020 budget for the organisation was 2.9 billion naira (£6.12 million). This looks small compared to the annual budget of the British Library which is currently at £142 million but for what services it can offer in Nigeria, that is a lot. It is perhaps not efficient to have 27 branches (while aspiring to have 9 more). Current overhead costs are 227.9m naira (£480,965.24) which could probably be better used for acquisitions, digitization, storage, and other expenses. The capital expenses cost 1.6 billion naira (£3.37 million). From what I saw in Ìbàdàn and Lagos, which should certainly be the two most prominent centers apart from the HQ, that money is terribly spent. The computers don’t work. Those that work aren’t being used by students. The catalogues are still manual. There is no electricity or inverters to provide power. The generators are rarely on, and people who use the reading rooms are often in quasi-dark environments. The library’s branches do not pay for their own acquisitions, and often even turn their backs on donations, for lack of space to store and preserve the materials being donated. I would be interested in knowing what capital expenses were made with £3.37 million every year!
National Library in Lagos. The condition of book storage.
The other, of course, is leadership. Until I speak with the National Librarian, I will have nothing particular to say here. But I hope to in the future. He apparently has a home in Ìbàdàn, and comes around often, every few months. Putting the right directors at each center — who know what is right, and who are capable of better managing the funds allocated there — might be a way out. One, of course, needs transparency about how much is being allocated to each branch. None of this information was made available to me, for the obvious reason of my non-insider status. But there were insinuations, particularly by the lower members of staff that I talked to, that mismanagement was also a part of the problem.
Everyone I met had mentioned the Olúsẹ́gun Ọbásanjọ́ Presidential Library in Abẹ́òkuta as one model of a decently managed and decently run library in Nigeria. It was founded shortly after the tenure of the man in whose name it was built, who had then ruled Nigeria for the second time as a civilian president. It turned out that Chief Ọbasanjọ́ himself had been instrumental in securing the land for the permanent site of the National Library in Abuja, and was a passionate advocate for proper archiving and documentation in Nigeria. So I was intensely curious about meeting him. Unfortunately, my time in Lagos had run out by the time the necessary arrangements were made, and I could not make the trip to Abẹ́òkuta. I intend to do this on my return from the fellowship. The Presidential Library, according to those who have visited it, boasts of a number of relevant records in Nigerian political and social history, and also the life of its patron as well, who was imprisoned in 1995 on the accusation of being an accessory to a fabricated coup. He was freed in 1998 as part of the amnesty programme of the subsequent military administrator. He became a candidate for office that same year, and was elected president in 1999.
One of the limitations, I believe, in getting sufficient funding for the Nigerian National Library is the ban on fundraising. All the funds for running the Library is given by the government. The act setting it up also prohibits any fundraising of any kind. So people can use it “free”. The result of that is that if the money disbursed from Abuja is insufficient, the library and the books suffer. At the British Library, at least one could pay to become a member, or use venues in the Library, or buy food at the public cafeteria. The BL also gets private funding, for activities such as the Endangered Archives Project or the Eccles Center. Those help support the Library as a public institution. I saw no sign of any such public-private partnership with the Nigerian equivalent. Perhaps changing the laws to make this possible, and allowing the branches to make money through small services, will help improve their use and competence.
Conditions at the National Library in Lagos
There are a number of grants that have supported library work in Nigeria. A sign at the Yaba branch says “This e-Library Project is supported by the Universal Service Provision Fund.” In Ìbàdàn, I learnt about TETFUND, which is a fund dedicated to helping tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Kenneth Dike Library got some of it. EAP at the BL has also been named as a potential funder for some documentation projects. These and many more can be helpful if properly managed.
Other Libraries, Comparisms, Conclusions
In Nigeria today, especially in more metropolitan places like Lagos, private libraries and reading spaces are springing up. In the same Yaba, about a kilometre or so from the National Library, there is a new private library renovated by a private bank and used to host readers and other enthusiasts. Some public events have been held there as well, including the famous one where a Guinness Record was made in 2018. There are also state-controlled public libraries which, very likely, suffer from the same problem as the federal one. One of my favourite places to go in Lagos, of course, is the Ouida House. It is not a library per se, but a bookshop with a public-facing side. It also has a reading room that is accessible.
A private library and reading space in Lagos Island
But in all, the library I found closest in ambition, scope, capability, and history, to the British Library is the Kenneth Dike Library in Ìbàdàn. With better funding and management, it might do even better. I suspect that the Hezekiah Oluwasanmi Library at the University of Ifẹ̀ comes real close, but I never got a chance to explore it either.
____
Thanks to Budgit for some of the budget figures I used here.
Every once in a while, a conversation returns to my timeline about the meaning of ‘akata’, the origin, the use, and other social dimensions of its existence in the relationship between Africans on the continent and those in America. Discussions are had and the issue goes away, only to return in another form at another time. Yesterday was one such event when, shortly before going to bed, someone tagged me on Twitter about the meaning of the word again. I shared photos of the entries in two of my dictionaries and thought that was all.
I found out, later, that the invitation came from a bigger context: an apology by my colleague and language professor, Uju Anya, for using the word in the past in different twitter contexts. The debate that followed was whether the word was a slur in the first place, whether she had the reason to apologise, whether those calling for her resignation were overplaying their hand about an issue of no relevance, or whether certain words are allowed a pass if the intentions are pure.
This time, I thought it best to put my thoughts down on what I know about the word, what I think about the perennial controversy. This essay draws from my experience as a linguist and lexicographer, native speaker of Yorùbá, and a scholar of history, especially of transatlantic slavery and attendant consequences.
What is akata?
Let’s start with the three meanings recorded in the Yorùbá dictionary:
From the CMS dictionary from 1913
n. Jackal, same as ‘Ajako’. Source: A Dictionary of Yorùbá Language by CMS (1913).
n. Civet-cat. Also “ajáko ẹtà”. Source: Dictionary of Modern Yorùbá by R.C Abraham (1958)
n. A type of bird which eats ripe-palm nuts. Source: Dictionary of Modern Yorùbá by R.C Abraham (1958)
As far as we know, the word doesn’t exist in any other Nigerian language.* It is a Yorùbá word — at least in its origin.
Is it a slur?
First, let’s start with history. Growing up in the eighties in Nigeria, I heard the word only as a descriptive term with no pejorative intent.
It was just any word, to refer to a certain demographic. We had òyìnbó for ‘white people’ (similar to muzungu in Swahili or onyi ocha in Igbo, or gringo in Spanish/Portuguese); we had akátá for Black Americans; we had Gambari for northerners in Nigeria (Sulu Gambari was the name of a famous Yorùbá-Fulani king in Ìlọrin); we had Tápà for Nupe people many of whom had intermarried with Yorùbá people; and we had kòbòkóbò for almost everyone else that didn’t speak Yorùbá.
Of all the terms, kòbòkóbò was the only one that seemed to carry a negative intent, because it referred to someone who, in the imagination of the Yorùbá person using the word, was not cultured enough to understand the language. The people we referred to with those words knew they were called that, and it never — to my knowledge — carried any negative blowback. It was used in film and popular culture.
There was a famous fuji music album by Àyìndé Barrister from the late eighties or early nineties in which he sang the following lines:
Akátá gba ‘jó
Òyìnbó gba ‘jó
Yorùbá gba ‘jó o
Translated:
American blacks danced to my song
American whites danced to my song
Yorùbás also danced to my song.
The album was one he waxed shortly after returning from an American tour, so it was a celebration of his popular appeal across different demographics. No slur in sight.
How did akátá even come to refer to African Americans?
No one has found any verifiable answer, but a plausible one goes like this:
In the sixties and seventies, African Americans channelled their social and political rebellion through the Black Panther movement, claiming an African cat as a symbol of their struggle for self-actualization. Yorùbá Nigerians in the States at the time, perhaps happy to participate, referred from then on to African Americans as akátá. It was not the exact Yorùbá word for panther**, but it was close. Whether that initial use was meant to be derogatory is something that needs to be researched, but there is no substantive proof of that, and many notable African scholars of Yorùbá extraction have written favourably about the Civil Rights Movement and all that came with it in the African-American struggle.
When/How did it become a slur?
It was when I became an adult that I started noticing different ways in which the word was used. Not just akátá, by the way, but also gàm̀bàrí and the others. You would hear someone being called gàmbàrí because he didn’t pay attention to instructions or appeared slow to act. Or for any random reason. This would be in-group conversations, particularly when no northerner was in sight. So it was not directed at the outsider, but at a Yorùbá person as an insult. The insult was to the Yorùbá target, not the northerner (even though the secondary insult to the northerner is also implied, but not overt). It is possible that akátá also then took on this character as time went on.
Such that almost every time I heard it from the early 2000s, it had a non-positive character. It was not a slur in a way that the n-word or even gàmbàrí was, that is, it was not a word that was used to insult a person to their face. In fact, I don’t think I recall any instance in which someone used akátá as a weapon. You can’t stand in front of someone and say “you bloody akátá”, it doesn’t quite work. But when it was used to refer to African-Americans, the meaning seemed to have changed. It could be about crime rates in the US, about any other unsavoury characteristic, or even about a normal or even friendly conversation. Which of those black people standing there do you want me to call? The akáta one? Okay. In fact, not many people today even know that it referred to a certain cat or bird — either of which are likely extinct anyway. You hear akátá and you think African-American. Not Obama, but Jesse Jackson. African parents could mention not wanting their children to “behave like those spoilt akátá kids” Or a man could tell his friend that his new girlfriend is an akátá; not as a pejorative but as a descriptor. Maybe it was the fact that such a word exists at all that referred to our black cousins on the other side of the Atlantic that brought the pejorative colouring; or maybe because people started saying it meant “wild animal” or maybe it was because of the conspiratorial way in which I’ve heard people use it as if in a secret code to prevent the subject of the conversation from knowing that it’s them to whom the word refers. There was just some othering seemingly implied in the common contemporary usage that perceptive listeners started to decry. The word itself had not changed, but it was no longer possible to call it just a descriptor.
But as with when meanings of words change everywhere, there are still people in Nigeria today who knew the word only in its first cross-continental non-negative use. People of my parent’s generation fall into this category. In normal everyday conversation, they will use akátá to demarcate an African in America from an African-American. They do not know it any other way, because we never found another word for that demographic. There are also other people, who don’t speak Yorùbá, who have only encountered the word from other Nigerians or from other Africans, and just continue to use it.
Does intention matter?
This is where the debate gets interesting: the question of whether one should mean to denigrate before the meaning of a word is called into question. This is a big ongoing debate. Not just with the n-word but also with words in other domains. Even the word ‘òyìnbó’, which I mentioned earlier, got me thinking a few years ago, after a white student asked me in class if it was a slur. I knew that it was not, but I realized, in explaining to her, that I couldn’t successfully convey all the contexts in which we use it without raising her suspicion that I was hiding something. I wrote an essay instead, but the response I got to it, especially from Nigerians, showed me that even the question of whether the word could be derogatory in certain contexts was not one that people wanted to have. “If we don’t mean it to be offensive, then why should we listen to you who say you find the usage uncomfortable?” the argument went. If you told my mother that akátá was derogatory, when she had not used it in that way, she would strongly object. I can point her to African-Americans finding it objectionable, so she might not use the word in public, but it won’t be because she believes that she’d done something wrong.
Recently, Beyoncé conceded that her use of spazz was ableist and she had it removed from an album — even when she didn’t have such an intention from the start. The word ‘negro’, which started as being just descriptive, is no longer in fashion today, because of the other connotations it took on in the hands of a more powerful culture. Shouldn’t akátá suffer the same fate?
I’m of the opinion, knowing how I’ve seen the word used, that we lose nothing by no longer using it for anything other than the animals. But I am also sympathetic to those who recognize their past usage, and apologise for doing so. I don’t expect that every Nigerian knows the origin of the word or the ways in which modern usage seems to have perverted it. The only thing we know is that African-Americans do not like it as well, and that should be enough, especially if the purpose of the conversation is to improve relations across the pond.
But the word won’t go away, because not every Yorùbá speaker lives on the internet or care about language-based social crusades, and because words don’t just disappear. Gringo and mzungu will continue to be in use, even if we can point to instances in which their usage is problematic. All we can do is continue to have the conversation.
Should anyone who uses it be cancelled?
No. As with many things, intent matters. So does knowledge, and one’s response to new information. We continue to evolve as a society, and so will our use of language and interaction with each other. Not every African-American is insulted by akátá either, perhaps because not every one of them has heard it, and some who have don’t care, unless they encounter it first through an online essay in which the meaning of the word is put as “cotton picker”, which it has never been. But many deeply resent it, either because of what they think it represents or just because of the othering implied in the way it has been used over the years. This is valid, and Africans should absolutely take it into account when they speak. My recommendation is that we stop using it totally to refer to anything but the animal. But I know that I’m not in the majority. If this is your first time hearing the word, all you need to know is that the origin is benign, its growth in use is muddy but complex, and that there are people from the language community where the word originated who never use it, just as there are some who don’t have any other way, but mean absolutely no harm.
