All is now set for an evening of ewi (Yoruba poetry) performances in celebration of the 90th birthday of legendary scholar and writer, Professor Ayo Bamgbose.
The event holding today Wednesday, January 26, is organised by the recently unveiled Yoruba World Centre, in collaboration with the Institute of African Studies and Yoruba Language Centre.
Holding at the institute, it is expected to feature ewi, ijala, esa egungun, ekun iyawo and other poetic forms of Yorubas.
It will start by 5pm.
According to one of his profiles, Bamgbose is an academic linguist, the first professor of Linguistics in Nigeria. He has made contributions to education and linguistics, achieving recognition in form of honours and election to offices in professional bodies.
Bamgbose was born in Odopotu, near Ijebu Ode in Ogun State of Nigeria in 1932. His father, Rev. Sangodipe Bamgbose, was a community leader of Odopotu, who was born into a prominent family of Egungun worshippers. His last name Bamgbose, which means help me carry Shango’s wand, (ose), and his father’s first name, meaning Sango consoles, also suggests that his family also worshipped Sango, the god of thunder.
After primary education Bamgbose was admitted, in 1948, into St. Andrew’s College. He qualified as a grade two teacher in 1951. He then gained admission into University of Ibadan, affiliated with the University of London. He graduated with a high second class upper division B.A. (Hons) English degree of the University of London in the year 1960. He proceeded to the University of Edinburgh where he earned a diploma in general linguistics in 1961 and his PhD in 1963 with the thesis A Study of Structures and Classes in the Grammar of Modern Yoruba.
He joined the staff of the University of Ibadan in 1963 as a Lecturer, rising quickly to the grade of Senior Lecturer in 1966 and to Professor in 1968. On retirement from the University, he was honoured with the title of Professor Emeritus.
The core of Bamgbose’s contribution to knowledge is his work on the structure of Yoruba language. Among his twenty-one books, Grammar of Yoruba (Cambridge University Press, 1966) remains a classic in the application of modern linguistics to Yoruba. Equally significant is Fonologi ati Girama Yoruba (University Press Ltd., Ibadan, 1990) which tackles the problem of linguistic metalanguage of Yoruba students. His versatility is evident in Orthographies of Nigerian Languages [Efik, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba] (National Language Centre, Lagos, 1981), Language and the Nation (Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1991), and Language and Exclusion (LIT Verlag, 2000). Bamgbose also wrote over 130 papers or chapters in books
