Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, will on Tuesday, November 23, 2021 arrive in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, to turn the first sod of the Yoruba World Centre inside the University of Ibadan.
He will be joined by the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi and eminent Yoruba leaders, under the chairmanship of the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi.
The organisers in a statement said, “the three-in-one occasion is being put together by the International Centre for Yoruba Arts And Culture (INCEYAC), the Institute of African Studies and the Yoruba Language Centre of the University.”
As stated, the programme will feature the opening of the Centre’s temporary base, the presentation of a full documentary on the Yoruba world Centre and the laying of the first foundation at the permanent site by the Vice President.
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“The Yoruba World Centre when completed will have a big library, an archive, a museum, a recreation, reconstruction and digitising centre, a broadcasting and film village and an artificial forest (Zoo).
“The purpose of this according to Mr Alao Adedayo, a member of the Board of Trustees of INCEYAC and Publisher of Alaroye Newspaper, is to make the centre to serve as a one-stop shop, offering old, new, recreated and reconstructed materials for researchers, lecturers, students, authors, journalists, historians and members of the public interested in Yoruba history, arts and culture as a tool for nation building, national cohesiveness and mutual understanding,” the organisers said.
The publisher of a Yoruba newspaper, Alaroye, Alao Adedayo, one of the organisers, commenting in the statement, said: “Being the largest user of Yoruba language (in print) in the world today, and because of our daily interactions with the language, arts, culture and history of the people, through our newspaper, Alaroye, we can confirm that there is no one institution in the entire world where researchers, or anyone at all, can stay to conduct and complete works on the history, arts and culture of the Yoruba people.
“And we believe there should be one to help us in nation building. Thus, it is a great development that INCEYAC and the University of Ibadan are in this together.”
