Professor Akin Ogundiran has challenged academic historians to live up to their responsibility as custodians of the past in order to curb tensions among traditional rulers over royal supremacy.
He spoke, on Tuesday, while delivering the Faculty of Arts Distinguished Alumnus Lecture, University of Ibadan, on the topic: “Ancient History for the Present: The Challenge of Ancestral Yoruba Cosmopolitanism to Post colonial Nigeria.”
Ogundiran, a Cardiss Collins Professor of Arts and Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA, attributed the tensions among traditional rulers to misrepresentation of history.
He spoke in a veiled reference to the recent supremacy tussle between the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade and Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi.
The scholar lamented that, academic historians have been hesitant to deploy the tools of critical historical thinking and deep-time perspective to informed controversies and national issues that involve cultural identity in Nigeria.
Ogundiran proposed the establishment of a Council on Yoruba Historical Studies to take on the responsibility of organising historical retreats for traditional rulers, chiefs, princes, princesses and kingmakers as a means to curb the royal supremacy battle.
He added that the Council should be saddled with the responsibility of fact-checking misleading historical pronouncements they might make in public.
Ogundiran, Professor of History and Courtesy Professor of Anthropology and of Black Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA, urged the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission to take the lead in the endeavour.
He identified the roles of uninformed social media influencers, and armchair historians who cannot differentiate between history, fable or allegory and history as well as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Google as challenges bedeviling the profession and rewriting history.
He further said academic historians, while they must treat traditional rulers with utmost respect, should reject royal rascality, pomposity and arrogance, adding that historians must not allow egocentric fables to be mistaken for facts.
Ogundiran added that, if kingmakers failed to check traditional rulers, historians owe it to the profession to call them out through their professional organisations.
He said it would be wrong to entrust kings as custodian of ancestral history, because they have political interests that scholars must interrogate.
Ogundiran noted that the royal supremacy tussle between the Alaafin and Ooni is needless, saying the two domains have their different histories, reigning at different times in history.
“Most academic historians are in the public space. But we have been hesitant to deploy the tools of critical historical thinking and deep-time perspective to informed controversies and national issues that involve cultural identity in Nigeria.
“I recognise that we face three challenges: First, we have the legion of social media influencers who also double as armchair historians—highly opinionated, irascible, and quick to abuse;
“Second, there are well-meaning citizens and intellectuals who understand the logic of critical thinking but are poorly equipped with critical historical thinking and cannot decipher the difference between history and fable or allegory and history;
“Third, we are confronted with the challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Google.
“Who is an Academic Historian? This is a person for whom historical inquiry is a profession and vocation, often with a teaching position.
“Academic historians utilise primary sources, which include documents, eyewitness accounts, oral traditions, language forms and linguistics, archaeological artifacts, and material culture, to write history.
“They also use performative arts such as music, dance, and rituals as sources.
“They ask questions of what, why, how, where, and when, and are attentive to the six “Cs” of historical thinking: context, change, continuity, causality, complexity, and contingency.
“When done well, their work is different from hagiography- an adulatory, idealised, and uncritical story about a place, time, or person.
“Unfortunately, it seems most Nigerians don’t know the difference between academic history and hagiography or amateur history.
“I can therefore understand why some of us, devoted to the historian’s craft and spend enormous time and resources excavating and interpreting that past with primary sources are often exasperated by the pronouncements and writings that we encounter on social media, and which some of our elites parrot as gospel truth.
“Such falsehoods and illogical stories are causing significant harm to the general public, particularly to younger people. Therefore, I call on historians to embrace their roles as custodians of the past.
“The same way it will be absurd to trust the President of Nigeria to serve as the custodian of Nigerian history, it is also absurd to entrust a king as the custodian of ancestral history. They have political interests that we must interrogate.
“I am not aware of any town in Yorubaland where the Palace is the only repository of history. Every lineage, every Orisa temple has its history. The history of a town or past kingdom is shared by different constituencies,” Professor Ogundiran said.
To put history in its proper perspective, the scholar challenged traditional rulers to invest resources in preserving ancestral legacies, artifacts, and memory.
He added: “If they are committed to the truth and not self-aggrandizing, they should build museums and establish royal and ritual archives in their communities. These are the resources that historians need to do their work effectively.
“We must be deferent to our kings, but we must reject royal rascality. We expect our kings to move with pomp and circumstance, but we must reject pomposity and arrogance from them. We must not allow egocentric fables to be mistaken for facts. Yoruba history is bigger than the ego of any royal father.
“If the kingmakers will not check them, we owe it to our profession as historians to call them out through our professional organisations.
“To this end, I propose that a Council on Yoruba Historical Studies be established to take on the responsibility of organising historical retreats for our leaders, including our princes and princesses, kingmakers, chiefs, and kings, and fact-checking misleading historical pronouncements they might make in public.
“The Council’s intervention must be based on established evidence and references to relevant literature. The Council must be humble to admit what we don’t know and guide in pointing to areas of new research.
“I particularly call on the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission to take the lead in this endeavour.
“There can be no development without an evidence-based history. I admit that historical narratives are always being contested and revised, but such revisions must be based on new evidence and theoretical insight, not on an individual’s whims and caprices.
“Likewise, I call on our Departments of History across Nigeria to rethink their approaches to historical education.
“A curriculum that focuses primarily on colonial and post-colonial history can only impoverish the intellect of future generations. I have said this many times, and I will say it again.
“We need a closer curriculum alignment among departments whose intellectual frameworks are based on historical thinking, such as Archaeology, Anthropology, Classics, Art History, and History.”
