Vice-President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, has called on the International Centre for Yoruba Arts and Culture in Ibadan, Oyo State, to join the global movement to champion the return of artifacts that were plundered, looted, or illegally taken away from Africa.
Professor Osinbajo made the call yesterday, at the presentation and launching of the Yoruba World Centre held at the John Paul II Hall of the University of Ibadan.
“Indeed, the Centre could serve as a home for such returned items where the immediate provenance or circumstances in which the items were taken is not clear or not known,” Vice President Osinbajo said at the event, which had the Alaafin of Oyo, His Imperial Majesty, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi; three deputy governors, religious leaders and academics in attendance.
Osinbajo said that the work of the Centre should “offer a base from which and sanctuary in which to reflect on how Yoruba culture can contribute to the tools of nation-building—the building of a more inclusive, fairer and more just society; the bringing together as one people an ethnically, and religiously diverse nation”.
According to him, “This intent is inherent in the design and work of this Centre. It bears repeating that culture is not just about antiquity. It is about the contemporary age and the age to come. This World Centre will therefore serve not just as a place of memory but as a place that inspires us and fires our collective imagination, even within the dynamic contexts of advances in technology, ideas and thought”.
The Vice President said that the Centre has the duty to make the rest of Nigerians learn, as President Buhari has observed, from the way Yorubas manage within their families to accommodate diverse faiths and beliefs.
Osinbajo expressed hope that the Centre would locate itself in the emergent creative economy and light fresh fires of imagination.
