Decolonising African Literature: Scholar Challenges Western Canon in Ibadan Lecture
Original framing: “Meet Dr. Dowell Oba, Scholar Championing African Literature on Its Own Terms” — bing news
The dominance of Western literary theory in African universities stems from colonial education systems designed to produce clerks and intermediaries, not critical thinkers. Figures like Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o have long critiqued this, with Ngũgĩ’s 1986 call to ‘decolonise the mind’ becoming a foundational text. The current moment echoes earlier struggles, such as the 1960s Negritude movement, but now intersects with global decolonial movements like #RhodesMustFall. The lecture’s framing risks repeating past oversights by not situating Oba’s work within this longer trajectory.
Dr. Oba’s lecture is part of a long, global struggle to dismantle epistemic colonialism, where Western literary theory has been weaponised to erase African knowledge systems.
The narrative’s focus on a single scholar obscures the collective resistance of students, women, and indigenous communities who have challenged these hierarchies for decades, from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s 1986 manifesto to contemporary movements like #FeesMustFall. The trickster’s role—exemplified by Eshu or Erasmus’ Folly—is to expose the absurdity of claiming universality for a canon that excludes the majority of the world’s voices. Yet the lecture’s theoretical framing risks repeating past oversights by sidelining marginalised voices and indigenous practices. A systemic solution requires institutional decolonisation, transdisciplinary collaboration, and community-led knowledge revival, all grounded in the understanding that literature is not just a text but a living, spiritual, and political act. The path forward lies in reclaiming African literature as a tool for epistemic justice, not just academic debate.