Content and Editorial

Abstract

Editorial
This edition comes with an interesting variety of articles that cuts across disciplines in the humanities. The first of these is Freeborn Odiboh’s “The African Experience and Global Art History: Towards a Curriculum for Critical Citizenship”, wherein the author focuses on the need for African educators to arrest the ‘othering’ of African’s historical contributions to the Arts. According to him the curricula of Art History in Africa’s institutions of higher learning could be enriched, to the benefit of the African, when reviewed from an African perspective. Drawing insight from a sociological and historical studies, Irene N. Osemeka’s article, “Issues in State Creation and Inter-Group Relations in Delta State: A Historical Analysis,” examines the nature and the changing dynamics of intergroup relations in Delta State following its creation in 1991, concluding that state creation has expanded the scope of intergroup conflicts in the state and that there is need for effective leadership to ensure peaceful coexistence among the various groups. Babatunji H. Adepoju, in “An Analysis of Grapho-Phonological Infelicities in Nigerian Political Discourse”, draws data from the electronic medium, radio, to instantiate the very common spellinginspired mispronunciations of English by Nigerians. His findings are as exciting as they are educative. 

In “Literature and History: A study of Nigerian Indigenous Historical Novels”, Lere Adeyemi queries the perception that literary works should not be equated with history, which offers ‘facts’ where literature merely attempts an artistic impression of what was or might be. Deploying the method of New Historicism, the author analyses two Yoruba novels: T. A. A. Ladele’s Igbi Aye n yi and Olu Owolabi’s Ote Nibo. With his paper entitled “A Critical Reflection on the Relevance of Philosophy in the Contemporary World”, Godwin Azenabor reiterates the value of philosophy not only in the intellectual tradition but also in lived experience. Azenabor explains that logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and the philosophy of other disciplines – all branches of philosophy – have and continue to help us answer the big questions regarding the pursuit of of the meaning of life, the concept of God, wisdom, self-understanding etc. Elham Shayegh’s “Beyond a Charted Identity” uses Michael Ontajee’s novel The English Patient to call for a pacifist world ethos which will being by diminishing the premium placed on ideologies of national identities that have produced nothing but conflict and wanton destruction of lives and property. 

Ray Chikogu’s paper is an exercise in linguistic stylistics, focusing on Ama Ata Aidoo’s use of metaphor in one of her creative works. Thus, “Stylistic Range of Metaphor in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes: A Love Story” is Chikogu’s attempt to explicate Aidoo’s metaphors using insights from semantics. In his interestingly titled “Teabags and Oranges as Metaphors of Sacrificial Positive Leadership in Africa: A Comparative Study of Selected TV Commercials and Plays”, Adeleke Ogunfeyimi does a multimodal analysis of two television adverts which he combines with analyses of two plays with the theme of sacrificial leadership, Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Tewfiq al Hakim’s The Song of Death. Ogunfeyimi thus finds a similarity between the speech and actions of digital cartoon characters and those of dramatic texts. In “Social Functions of Ibadan City Anthem in Southwestern Nigeria”, Titus O. Stephen offers an English rendition of the anthem of one of Africa’s most iconic cities. He reports that the anthem preaches peaceful coexistence, records the exploits of the city’s past heroes, attests to the city’s iconic topography, and does not shy away from noting the city’s susceptibility to flooding, among others. Emmanuel O. Akubor, in his polemical paper entitled, “The Amalgamation Story and Misrepresentation of the Making of Nigeria: Periscoping Nigeria since circa 1914 A.D.”, critiques Nigeria’s amalgamation story and insists that the British effort of 1914 was in fact meant to give the colonists unfettered access to the country’s resources while exposing it to unbridled capitalist greed. For him, the event of 1914 was a balkanization rather than an amalgamation as it has fostered severe ethno-religious tension among peoples who would ultimately have evolved to cooperate on terms decided by them. Finally, Franca Attoh’s review of M.D. Abubakar and M.M. Ogbeidi’s Beyond the Guns: Policing Terrorism in a Democratic System wraps up an engaging compendium.

Muyiwa Falaiye, Ph.D.

Editor-in-Chief and Dean, Faculty of Arts