SummaryThis was a cross-sectional study carried out on 462 pregnant women attending antenatal care in Ibadan, Nigeria. The study's aims were to assess the level of participation of Nigerian men in pregnancy and birth, the attitude of the women and likely targets for improved care delivery. Three hundred and forty-nine women (75.5%) were aware that husbands could participate in childbirth. Most women did not think it was their husbands' place to attend antenatal clinic (48.3%) or counselling sessions (56.7%). Nearly all husbands (97.4%) encouraged their wives to attend antenatal clinic – paying antenatal service bills (96.5%), paying for transport to the clinic (94.6%) and reminding them of their clinic visits (83.3%). Three hundred and thirty-five husbands (72.5%) accompanied their wives to the hospital for their last delivery, while 63.9% were present at last delivery. More-educated women were less likely to be accompanied to the antenatal clinic, while more-educated men were likely to accompany their wives. Yoruba husbands were less likely to accompany their wives, but Yoruba wives with non-Yoruba husbands were 12 times more likely to be accompanied. Women in the rural centre were less likely to receive help with household chores from their husbands during pregnancy, while educated women were more likely to benefit from this. Monogamous unions and increasing level of husbands' education were associated with spousal presence at delivery. It appears that male participation is satisfactory in some aspects, but increased attendance at antenatal services and delivery would be desirable.
Introduction. Perspectives on gender and development in Africa and its diaspora / Akinloyè Òjó, Ibigbolade S. Aderibigbe, and Felisters Kiprono -- Women as sandwiches in the jaws of violence : a study of the impact of crisis on the female gender in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novels / Augustine O. Evue -- Violence against women in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple hibiscus and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo's Trafficked : an African feminist insight / Charles A. Bodunde (Ph. D) and Foluke R. Aliyu-Ibrahim -- Narrating the woes of women in war times : the examples of Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo's Roses and bullets and Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a yellow sun / Ezinwanyi E. Adam & Chinenye M. Egboh -- Female circumcision : inexpressiveness and loss in Julie Okoh's Edewede / Oludolapo Ojediran -- Gender and dramaturgy in Wale Ogunyemi's Queen Amina of Zazzau and Femi Osofisan's Women of Owu / Ojo Olorunleke -- Socio-cultural perception of sexist Yoruba proverbs and implications for peace and national cohesion / Adeniyi Kikelomo, Jegede Francis, and Adebanjo Mopelola -- Asunle cannot be a man : a gendered analysis of Yoruba praise names in Yorubaland and the diaspora / Akinloyè Òjó -- Gender equality, gender inequality or gender complementarity : insights from Igbo traditional culture / Dorothy Oluwagbemi-Jacob -- Gender and contesting phenomena (religion, culture, and ethnicity) : towards development in Africa and the African diaspora / Oyeronke Olademo -- Gender equality : a comparative narrative in African religious Christian and Islamic traditions / Adepeju Johson-Bashua -- Gender equality narratives in African cultural and religious beliefs : contents and discontents / Ibigbolade S. Aderibigbe -- Islamic law of inheritance : ultimate solution to social inequality against women in Yoruba land / Abdulmajeed Hassan Bello -- Not on this mat : a biographical sketch of marriage, labor, sex and gender relations in an African history / Ebenezer Ayesu -- Culture and development : indigenous structures, gender, and everyday life in colonial coastal southern Ghana / Kwaku Nti -- The challenge of gender : marginal participation of women in mathematics in Nigeria / Obale-Hundeyin Ayo. S -- Rural women farmers and food production in Ekiti-Kwara, Nigeria : motives and challenges of operation / Olawepo. R. A -- Female achievement in geography and planning in Lagos State University, Nigeria / Mohammad Olaitan Lawal -- Women and sport in Kenya / Janet Musimbi M'mbaha
AbstractThis article provides an overview of the contributions to philosophy of Nigerian philosopher Sophie Bọ´sẹ`dé Olúwọlé (1935–2018). The first woman to earn a philosophy PhD in Nigeria, Olúwọlé headed the Department of Philosophy at the University of Lagos before retiring to found and run the Centre for African Culture and Development. She devoted her career to studying Yoruba philosophy, translating the ancient Yoruba Ifá canon, which embodies the teachings of Orunmila, a philosopher revered as an Óríṣá in the Ifá pantheon. Seeing his works as examples of secular reasoning and argument, she compared Orunmila's and Socrates' philosophies and methods and explored similarities and differences between African and European philosophies. A champion of African oral traditions, Olúwọlé argued that songs, proverbs, liturgies, and stories are important sources of African responses to perennial philosophical questions as well as to contemporary issues, including feminism. She argued that the complementarity that ran throughout Yoruba philosophy guaranteed women's rights and status, and preserved an important role for women, youths, and foreigners in politics.
A case study of a Yoruba city of pre-colonial origin, Ilorin, Nigeria, reveals a movement of rural women to marry into wealthy polygymous compounds in the city and the return of some of these women to their rural natal compounds later in life. This movement may be an explanation for the high proportion of women in indigenous towns, and perhaps also in some newer medium-sized settlements. It can also be seen as a reflection of the unequal and exploitive relationship between the towns and their rural hinterland.
The experiences of two groups of Yoruba women in Ru Nigeria who tried to organize themselves along modern cooperative lines are traced. The progress of the first group, which tried to adhere to government regulations, is compared to that of the second, which molded its own rules. Cohesion, personal development, & financial growth were found to be greater in the self-regulating group. Implications for cooperative policy are discussed. HA.
SummaryThis paper examines the effect of age at first marriage, number of wives and type of marital union on fertility among Yoruba females in Western Nigeria. The evidence indicates that age at first marriage and hunband's number of wives do not have a significant effect on completed fertility. Type of marital union, on the other hand, seems to have an effect on fertility. Women in de facto unions experience lower fertility than women in formal marriages.
Reviews Power and Performance: Ethnographic explorations through proverbial wisdom and theater in Shaba, Zaire, by Johannes Fabian. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1990; and I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, women and the past in a Yoruba town, by Karin Barber. Edinbrugh University Press for the International African Institute (International African Library 7), Edinburgh, 1991. (PAS)
Female genital mutilation (or female circumcision) has been experienced by over 100 million women in sub-Saharan Africa and the Nile valley. Efforts to suppress the practice were made in the earlier decades of the present century, especially by missionaries in Kenya in the 1920s and early 1930s. Successful indigenous opposition to this activity led to a cultural relativist attitude toward FGM being dominant among governments and international bodies for the next half century. This situation has changed over the last 20 years as the women's movement has led an attack on the practice, so that by the mid-1990s all relevant major international bodies and governments without exception had committed themselves to its suppression. Nevertheless, efforts to counter FGM have often been weak and there has been little evidence of their success. This paper draws on a continuing research program among the Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria to show not only that FGM has begun to decline but that this occurence can be explained wholly by programs organized by the Ministry of Health and women's organizations. The focus of this paper is on the determinants of this change. These are shown to be: (1) a reduction in ceremonies associated with the practice, (2) its increasing medicalization, (3) indigenous secular campaigning based on the provision of information, and (4) a focus on individuals, especially women. There is little belief that the campaign is an assault on the culture, but rather a growing feeling, especially among those influenced by it, that it would be more appropriate once such a campaign has begun for it to be whole-hearted rather than lukewarm.
Female genital mutilation (or female circumcision) has been experienced by over 100 million women in sub-Saharan Africa and the Nile valley. Efforts to suppress the practice were made in the earlier decades of the present century, especially by missionaries in Kenya in the 1920s and early 1930s. Successful indigenous opposition to this activity led to a cultural relativist attitude toward FGM being dominant among governments and international bodies for the next half century. This situation has changed over the last 20 years as the women's movement has led an attack on the practice, so that by the mid-1990s all relevant major international bodies and governments without exception had committed themselves to its suppression. Nevertheless, efforts to counter FGM have often been weak and there has been little evidence of their success. This paper draws on a continuing research program among the Yoruba people of southwest Nigeria to show not only that FGM has begun to decline but that this occurence can be explained wholly by programs organized by the Ministry of Health and women's organizations. The focus of this paper is on the determinants of this change. These are shown to be: (1) a reduction in ceremonies associated with the practice, (2) its increasing medicalization, (3) indigenous secular campaigning based on the provision of information, and (4) a focus on individuals, especially women. There is little belief that the campaign is an assault on the culture, but rather a growing feeling, especially among those influenced by it, that it would be more appropriate once such a campaign has begun for it to be whole-hearted rather than lukewarm.
This article examines the place of religion in the process of 'becoming modern', associated with conversion to Christianity and with literacy, in one Ekiti Yoruba town in southwestern Nigeria. It questions theories of modernization that presume a shift from communal 'traditional' to private, secularized religious practice, focusing on beliefs about the genesis of life, specifically cosmology and fertility. This approach provides a means for examining assumptions about the separation of the secular and religious, evidenced through an examination of local interpretations of biblical texts associated with barrenness and extraordinary births. How these stories have been interpreted by Ekiti Yoruba women and men offers a perspective on the processes whereby forms of 'modern hybrids' are constructed, altered, and reconstructed, as well as on how the fundamental bases of fertility are understood in particular social contexts.
I am delighted to announce the publication of Volume 27 (2021) of our esteemed journal, Lagos Notes and Records. The volume contains twelve (12) well-researched articles in the various disciplines of the Humanities such as communication studies, history, language studies, linguistics, literature, and other related disciplines. The first article by Abimbola Adesoji, "Newspapers and the Sharia Debate in Nigeria: Contexts, Issues and Trend", examines some selected newspapers' and magazines' coverage of the Sharia debate in Nigeria with focus on bringing out their different dimensions and patterns of the issues and the contexts in which they discussed them. The newspapers and magazines are Daily Times, Nigerian Tribune, New Nigerian, National Concord, The Guardian, Newswatch, Tell, as well as New York Times, London Times, and the Global Mail of Canada. Using the historical and comparative research methods, the author concludes that the positions taken by the various newspapers were influenced by the way they assessed how Nigerians perceive religion and allow it to influence their decisions and actions in their relationship with one another. In the second article, "Ananse/Èşù Rising: Trickster Figures andShakespeare in Davlin Thomas's Lear Ananci, a Caribbean King Lear", Lekan Balogun analyses how Thomas appropriates both Shakespeare's King Lear and Ananci in order to provide forceful and penetrating insights about the failure of postcolonial realities in the English-speaking Caribbean country of the author. He argues that Thomas' Lear Ananci uses Shakespeare's King Lear and the Yoruba (diasporic) tradition about the trickster Ananci, who assumes the personality of Esu, to address the post-colonial political failures in Trinidad and Tobago in particular and the Caribbean as a whole. The third article by Faruq Idowu Boge, "Water Challenges in Post-colonial Ikorodu Area of Lags State, 1967-1999", examines the history of water infrastructure and challenges in Ikorodu area of Lagos from 1967 to 1999. It employs the qualitative method and historical research approaches to discuss the issues of water challenges, such as inadequate water supply and poor infrastructure, and their impact on the socio-economic development of Ikorodu and its environs during the post-colonial period. The article closes with the recommendation that the government should partner with the private sector to address the problems associated with water supply in the area. Ademola Fayemi and Abiola Azeez, in the fourth article, "Epistemic Unfairness in Barry Hallen's Account of Agency in Yoruba Moral Epistemology", examine the problem of unfair treatment and discrimination against epistemic agents in knowledge production, knowledge sharing, and consensus practices in Hallen's account of Yoruba epistemic thought. The authors are of the view that understanding epistemic agency is essential to examining the depth of epistemic harm and the conclusion inherent in Yoruba epistemology. In the fifth article, "Perspectives on Cultural and National Development as Reflected in Two Igbo Poems", Ujubonu Okide discusses some cultural and national development initiatives and strategies that can be derived from some Igbo poems. The author uses the theory of inference and implication to scrutinize issues such as the attributes of a good citizen and the portrayal of leadership as contained in Maduekwe's "Ezi onye obodo" and Ekechukwu's "Obodo anyi" selected from Akpa Uche's (1979) An Anthology of Igbo Poems. She concluded that the attainment of national unity and progress should be seen as the outcome of a mutual sacrifice consciously undertaken by cultured citizens and leaders. The sixth article, Clement Odoje's "Confluence of Interests in the Translations of Ake: the Years of Childhood and Aké: ní Ìgbà Èwe: An Appraisal of Language Retrieval and Translation", investigates the interests behind the literary translation of Wole Soyinka and Akinwumi Iṣọla's translations of Ake with the view to establish the necessary features of translation and language retrieval employed in the process. The author argues that, although both writers employed the same strategies such as language transposition and equivalence, there are certain features that distinguish one from the other. Arising from the above, the author concludes that translation exhibits two different cultures and languages while language retrieval exhibits the same culture but different languages in the source and target texts. Ayọdele Oyewale's "The Ethos of Homage-paying and the Assessment of Ethical Issues in Yoruba Verbal Arts" is the seventh article. It examines the moral issues involved in Yoruba homage-paying using seven explicit Yoruba proverbial sayings on homage, selected Ifa verses, and two oral genres as case studies. Based on the ethical determinism approach, the author concludes that while early Yoruba professional artistes had clear understanding on how germane the Yoruba concept of homage was in their society, their contemporary counterparts appear to have deviated from the norm. John Olubunmi Faloju and Eniayo Sobola in the next article, "The Meaning, Function, and Contextual Usage of Metaphors on Women in Russian and Yoruba", employ the theory of context by Bronislaw Malinowski to investigate the meaning, function, and contextual usage of metaphors on women in Russian and Yoruba cultures. They argue that metaphors are used to project the worldview of people in different speech communities on social issues and women generally, and that metaphors in the two societies portray women both positively and negatively, especially in terms of their social functions and speech acts. The ninth article by Raheem Oluwafunminiyi, "Writing on Marginal Muslim Figures: The Religious Career of a Community Mu'adhdhin in FESTAC-Town, Lagos, Nigeria", discusses the activities of some of the "marginal" Muslim figures in FESTAC Town, who played significant roles in the historical progression of Islam in the area. The author also addresses some of the misconceptions associated with the Mu'adhdhin in a typical Yoruba Muslim community and recommends the need for the Muslim community to accord the Mu'adhdhin the recognition specified by the Shariah. Folorunso Adebayo's "Comparative Literature in Nigeria: A Thematic Examination of Gogol's The Government Inspector and Osofisan's Who's Afraid of Solarin?, which is the tenth article of the volume, discusses the relevance of comparative literature, intertextuality, and modern drama in Nigeria with focus on the distinction between literary adaptation and translation in Femi Osofisan's Who's Afraid of Solarin and Nicolai Gogol's The Government Inspector. The author concludes that for countries to address some of the social, economic and political crises plaguing them, they need to dramatise important literary texts for their sociopolitical re-orientation, and that Nigeria needs to incorporate such texts in the school curriculum at the primary and secondary school levels. In the eleventh article, "Undressing to Confront the Bullet: Nigeria's Niger-Delta Women Mobilizing against Malpractices and Violence in the 2019 Rivers State Gubernatorial Elections", Olasupo Thompson examines how some women in Rivers State during the 2019 gubernatorial election in the state deployed nudity as a form of non-violent protests against the crisis that trailed the election. Based on the qualitative method of research, the frustration-aggression, and the J. Curve theories employed, the author argues that the use of the unconventional method of nudity by the women in Rivers State to press home their demands succeeded in thwarting electoral malpractices in the affected areas of the state. In the concluding article, "The Impact of 'Ghana-Must-Go' Returnees on the Agricultural and Community Development of Ghana", Paul Njemanze and Omon Osiki investigate the impact of Ghana's returnees, who were victims of the 1983 mass expulsion exercises in Nigeria, on the agricultural and community development of Ghana. They argue that the activities of the returnees assisted in great measures in reducing the humanitarian crisis and food scarcity associated with the expulsion exercises and that this assisted in no small measure in their reintegration into the Ghanaian society. Finally, I want to sincerely thank and congratulate the Editorial Team and the Advisory Board for their efforts and hard work in ensuring the timely completion of this volume. I also congratulate the authors for the success of getting their papers published in our journal. It is my sincere hope that the academic community will find the articles therein interesting and meaningful in their quest to expand the frontier of knowledge in the humanities and allied disciplines.
Indigenous women are important part of a community's social capital. This study examined women's use of Indigenous knowledge (IK) for environmental security and sustainable development in southwest Nigeria. Qualitative data was collected using in-depth interviews conducted among 80 purposively selected rural Yoruba women. The data were analysed using descriptive tools such as frequencies, percentages, and content analysis. The findings reveal an extensive wealth of IK used in agriculture, food processing and preservation, family health care, and child care. The findings also suggest that paying attention to IK will help to incorporate culture as part of rural development and sustainable development in Nigeria, leading to more successful outcomes using place-based knowledge. Indigenous women can, and should, contribute to the design and implementation of sustainable development initiatives because of their extensive IK.
Wazobia, the name of the female king in Tess Onwueme's play The Reign of Wazobia, is a neologism derived from Yorùbá, Igbó, and Hausa respectively, the three dominant languages in Nigeria. Motivated by the relevance of Onwueme's lexical selection and the socio-political contexts in which the play is set, the essay relies on pragmatic contexts of language usage to analyse the coinage of the name to ascertain whether it dramatizes a political attempt to advocate unity between the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria. The essay also interrogates Wazobia's dual gender status, and the feminist implications of the fact that she does not rule as a woman but as either a man or an androgynous figure. Wazobia's dual gender and the illegal extension of her three-year regency raise a number of questions, some of which appear to contradict Onwueme's well-articulated feminist stance. The essay shows that the neologism of Wazobia is largely restricted to a feminist stance, canvassing intra-gender unity among all Nigerian women as a prerequisite for attaining power and emergence into politics and spaces of leadership. Wazobia's gender duality is interpreted as Onwueme's rejection of gender-associated restrictions. This dual status also embodies socio-political implications for unity in the male/female divide, and the Igbóo/Hausa/Yorùbá division. The work interprets the favourable treatment of Wazobia's tyranny as Onwueme's feminist bias and political aspirations for women.
Anthropology has long recognized the inadvertent polluting power of the male and female genitals. In his important discussion of Yoruba beliefs in female power and witchcraft, Raymond Prince (1961) recognized that African women know very well that they can direct the power that can emanate from their own genitals, and in some extreme situations their threats to loosen this power are strongly persuasive. Only a few others have recognized the aggressive use of female genital power. Further research in this area has important implications for understanding African ideas of sexuality.
The Yoruba presence in the Americas, particularly in Brazil and Cuba, has been the topic of much research in past years. The role of the individuals who molded and guided the new directions taken by these cultural manifestations, however, continues to be virgin terrain. In particular and without doubt, women were the most important contributors to these acculturative processes. The present article examines the influence of three African women and their contribution to the evolution and survival of Lukumi religion in Cuba. In so doing, it brings to the fore other important issues that cast light on the lives of Afro-Cuban women in nineteenth-century Cuba forced to live in a Eurocentric society in which they occupied the lowest rung of the ladder. These issues highlight the hardships and impediments that in many ways all Afro-Cubans had to overcome in their struggle for power and respect--even among members of their own ethnic groups. Eventually, this struggle played an important role in the contributions made by these groups to Cuban culture and society.
