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Arabic Education in Ilorin (Nigeria) and its Contemporary Contexts

A Talk by Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah, Visiting Scholar, Program of African Studies

Co-sponsored by MENA Languages Program.

Light reception to follow.

Centuries before European Colonization in Africa, Ilorin (a town in western Nigeria) was being celebrated as a major center of Arabic and Islamic Education. Arabic education as a culture and Arabic as a writing system were firmly rooted not only to develop speakers of Arabic language but also to establish a writing system for the Ilorin Indigenous languages of Yoruba, Hausa and Fulfulde. We will look at how these traditions have continued to help Ilorin to maintain an edge in the Arabic literary tradition in Nigeria.  

Professor Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah is a distinguished scholar of comparative African literature who is currently at Visiting Scholar at Northwestern’s Program of African Studies. 
Na’Allah received both a BA and MA in English literature from the University of Ilorin in 1988 and 1992, respectively. As a student, he anchored a radio program, contributed articles for local newspapers, and published poetry. He then went to the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada where he earned a PhD in comparative literature in 1999. After that he joined the faculty of the Department of African American Studies at Western Illinois University eventually rising to become its chair. In 2009, he returned to Nigeria to become the pioneer vice chancellor of Kwara State University, serving in that capacity for two terms, before becoming vice chancellor of the University of Abuja in 2019. 

Na’Allah has authored or coauthored many books, including Africanity, Islamicity, and Performativity: Identity in the House of Ilorin (Bayreuth African Studies, 2009), African Discourse in Islam, Oral Traditions, and Performance (Routledge, 2010), Globalization, Oral Performance, and African Traditional Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, March 2018), and Yoruba Oral Tradition in Islamic Nigeria: A History of Dadakuada (Routledge, 2019). Na’Allah has also edited or coedited other books on African literature, including Ogoni's Agonies: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria (Africa World Press, 1998). His work on the evolution of Dadakuada (a Yoruba performance art form) in Ilorin and its connection to Yoruba oral history deconstructs misconceptions surrounding Yoruba oral history but also sheds light on its adaptation to Islamic cultural principles.