The Yoruba World Centre, launched last year by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, has begun a renewed effort to save the Yoruba language and culture. To this end, the Centre plans an immediate collaborative move with all stakeholders, especially the broadcast media, Egbe Akomolede (Yoruba teachers Association) and the Nollywood, whose major language of communication is Yoruba.
This move, according to the Coordinator of the Centre, Ógbeni Alao Adedayo, becomes necessary to gather all efforts made so far to protect, preserve and promote Yoruba language and culture. This will allow for redefining, strategizing, and refocussing on the principal objective of all these efforts, which is to save the language by its proper transmission to the coming generation.
“From this week, we shall visit all broadcasting stations in the Southwest, one after the other”, says Alao Adedayo. “We want to know all they have been doing towards the preservation and promotion of Yoruba language and culture, and to suggest what other steps the Yoruba World Centre thinks should be taken. The aim is to come together, all of us, to save our language and culture, and the time is now! And to remind ourselves that the survival of the language is also the survival of those media that use the language to get to their audience.”
The Yoruba World Centre believes that plans to promote, preserve and transmit Yoruba language to its users or coming generation must include the media that use the language, Egbe Akomolede which is the Yoruba teachers’ association, the people in Nollywood and the government. Individually, these groups have been engaged in various activities knowingly or unknowingly, on the promotion of the language and culture, and what the Centre plans to do now is to bring all efforts together, for a better result and standardisation.
Oyo State is hosting the collaboration-seeking team now for two weeks, where over 20 broadcasting stations shall be visited. The Coordinator, Ogbeni Alao Adedayo, who is also the Publisher of Alaroye Newspaper, is personally leading the team.