Rituals of Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria

Rituals of Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria
Author: Morufu B. Omigbule
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 152756956X

This book showcases six prominent ritual festivals of Ile-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria: namely Ọ̀rànfè᷂̣, Ìtàpá, Òrìṣàlásẹ̀, Ọbaresé, Òrìṣàkirè and Ọwálàrẹ́. It reveals the hidden and enduring beauties of Ifẹ̀ ritual festivals, providing rare information about the region, the acclaimed origin place and spiritual capital of Yoruba people. Through profound analysis of each of the festivals, it affords information that is unusual in both depth and breadth. The text also provides pace for the views of the practitioners of culture-specific literary-ethnographic scholarship. It, however, pushes the critical edges of its engagement with the ritual festivals and represents an important record of enduring cultural legacies with the unusual capacity to inform about Ifẹ̀ rituals in a way that serves the interest of Yoruba cultural studies in general.

Snapshots: An X-ray of Cameroons Democracy, Governance and Unification

Snapshots: An X-ray of Cameroons Democracy, Governance and Unification
Author: Sam-Nuvala Fonkem
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2014-01-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9956791806

In the 1960s and 1970s, Third World governments prescribed and imposed a certain kind of journalism variously called objective journalism or development journalism. They understood this as journalism restricted to reporting facts as dished out by their propagandists and did not tolerate the questioning of government policy. By development journalism, they meant the mere reporting of government efforts to provide services, amenities and infrastructures and the singing of praises anytime a bridge was inaugurated, irrespective of whether it was well-built or whether the contract to build was awarded according to the norms of transparency and probity. This one-sided journalism was prevalent especially in state-owned media and media practitioners in the few private news publications that existed who did not toe the line were subjected to constant harassment and incarceration. However, with the coming of well-trained journalism graduates into the scene in the 1970s and the advent of global liberalization in the late 1980s and 1990s, daring journalists like Sam-Nuvala Fonkem thought it was time to take the bull by the horn and start taking a more critical look at government pronouncements, matching policy statements with real action in the field; in short, moving from objective journalism to interpretative and investigative journalism. This collection of Sam-Nuvala Fonkems writings is a sampling of the fruit of that new spirit to dare where angels hitherto feared to tread, to hold public officials to account and to expose the falsehood cached behind the political masquerade of the ruling class.

Education in West Africa

Education in West Africa
Author: Emefa Takyi-Amoako
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2015-05-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 144117785X

Education in West Africa is a comprehensive critical reference guide to education in the region. Written by regional experts, the book explores the education systems of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. It critically examines the development of education provision in each country, whilst exploring both local and global contexts. Including a comparative introduction to the issues facing education in the region as a whole, this handbook is an essential reference for researchers, scholars, international agencies and policy-makers at all levels.

A Grammar of Emai

A Grammar of Emai
Author: Ronald P. Schaefer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 1019
Release: 2016-12-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110766280

This reference grammar is the first ever description of West Africa’s Edoid language Emai. It incorporates narrative, lexical and grammatical field results over the last three decades. Treated are morphology, syntax and argument structure after an introductory phonology and orthographic overview highlighting grammatical and lexical tone. Individual chapters delineate noun and verb phrase structure as well as clause shape in discourse and clause combination. Noun inflection and derivation are detailed as is verb inflection in the context of tense, aspect and modality. Noun phrase character encompasses remnant noun classes, nominal modification types and pronoun forms followed by conjunction. Verb phrase features include complex predicates, both verbs in series and verb plus postverbal particle, functionally distinct copulas, double objects, and sentence complement types constrained by matrix verb. Also analyzed are preverbal and postverbal adverbials relative to information question types. Multi-clause constructions are profiled as to coding varieties across dependent clauses as well as precedence relations. A concluding chapter presents a sample narrative in orthographic form, interlinear gloss and English free translation.