Professor Nelson Fashina

Q: Are you saying that the lesser gods that predicted the coming of Christ accept that Christ is superior to them?

A: They believe that Christ is superior to them. They said so. “Orunmila” said “Ela” will be superior to them.

Q: If the lesser gods accept the supremacy of Christ as you have claimed, why will you as a prophet of God and gospel preacher not stay only with Christ rather than worshipping him with lesser gods?

A: That is a very good question. I didn’t tell you that I worship Christ with lesser gods. I practise traditional medicine. One thing is sure, I consider our festivals as evidences of our prima facie civilization, as our indigenous civilization, and our epistemology. “Ifa” is not an object of worship, it is the divine philosophy of God and the wisdom corpus of God and it is our guiding philosophy to the universe and the knowledge that actually filter out of “Ifa” is universal. It has universal applicability and they are relevant to every social situation. They are scientific because we have chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, every brand of knowledge, and social science in it. As a result, I don’t think there is anything to be discounted as demonic. I don’t believe that “Ifa” is demonic. All we need to do is to extrapolate the different branches of knowledge provided by “Ifa” and convert them to our own indigenous usage, our own technology and knowledge as our own unique contribution to the ocean of global world of knowledge. Western religion has deprived us of access to our lives and being because we don’t practice it with sincerity. If we practice it with sincerity, then we will know the meeting point between our own indigenous corpus and that of western religion.

Q: Are you a Babalawo?

A: I am a prophet. I am equally a herbal doctor that people also derogatorily call Babalawo. Every babalawo has Ifa and they practice traditional medicine.

Q: Do you have Ifa?

A: My great grandfather, my grandfather had Ifa. So, how do I deny having Ifa?

Q: Can you cast Ifa?

A: I have knowledge of it. I can read it. I acquired it when I was growing up.

Q: What are the diseases that you as a Babalawo or herbal doctor can cure?

A: From about 2010, I have been treating patients with HIV. Sometimes ago, I subjected some of the leaves, roots and back of the trees that I use for herbal medicine to some researches and the professors of medicines who carried out the researches for over two years said that those particular plants have potentials to cure HIV. One of the leaves was isolated as being capable of inhibiting the progress of cancer cells.

Q: Have you ever cured HIV?

A: I have testimonies about that. I didn’t propagate this and announce myself. It is only those who know and come to me. About 10 people have been cured. I didn’t announce this because I know the implication for the atmosphere of Nigeria where there is absolute disbelief about the potency of indigenous healing methods.

Q: Are you saying that if an HIV patient is referred to you, you can cure?

A: Yes. It is a shame that Nigerian government is not investing in indigenous medicine. Government should invest in our research so that it can be useful to our society. The spirit of God told me that by 2026, the West will look back to Africa for cures.

Q: What are the other ailments you can deal with?

A: Different ailments including malaria, and stroke. We can make attempts with those that have cancer. But I cure fibroid, infertility, low sperm count, and cure for psychiatric problems.

Q: Could you briefly talk about your researches especially in the areas of your scholarly competence?

A: My area of competence in scholarship is African Literature, literary theory, text stylistics and linguistics. Researching into African literatures is an intriguing engagement for me because it allows me to enjoy romanticization with the indigenous knowledge that I propagate as well as investigating African nature of being, knowledge, science, epistemology and myth. My researches have covered the three genres of literature: drama and film, fiction, poetry and oral lores, but my thought is in literary theory/criticism and its poetics. The past five years has been devoted to research in the discovery of the indigenous African critical system, and reading theory rather than relying on Western episteme of literary theory.

Literary theories are various ways of intellectual yardsticks, and principles by which we interpret literature. For almost a century, African written and oral literatures have been devoted to critical interpretations that are engaged through the use of western theories like Western phenomenology, Western semiotics, Western psycho-analysis, Western Structuralism, Western Deconstructionism, and Western Sociological method of reading literature in general. Most of the time, this Western paradigms of critical philosophy seem to take African indigenous literary creativity and its meaning to another direction such that attempting to foist it on our indigenous knowledge production leads to misinterpretation and distraction from the depth of knowledge that are esconsed in African literature.

For example, the Western family system of nuclear driven unit of individualism, betrays the African family system of elaborate extended family system of communalism and economic interdependency. So, when you begin to apply Western theories to interpret African space, you get awkward meanings. Also, the interpretation of our religion which is discounted as gothic and idolatrous is a product of Western epistemic philosophy. We have our own African epistemology. For example, in the Greek philosophy, early philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato devised principles that made us to understand the Western cosmos. These principles are also studded in our indigenous knowledge production system, and we need to recognize that; that the concept of African womanhood is an inexhaustible mine of philosophy than the concept of the European woman.

That is the reason why feminism in the context of Western political propagation of ideology is foisted on the practice of African feminism and the concept is demystifying the sacred position of womanhood in African society. For example, the indigenous Yoruba woman is satisfied with being a house wife to her husband, but in the Western paradigm, they seem to conceive the woman in images of lesbianism, prostitution and the like. As a matter of fact, our system of female pedigree and morality is grounded on the inviolability of her pre-marital virginity. Virginity is valued in most African societies; but in the Western tradition of postmodern essentialism and eccentricity, female virginity is no longer valued. Most of the time, our indigenous interpretation of the moon, the sky, the earth and all that are ensconced in most of Osundare’s poetry, for example, is an inexhaustible mine of meanings. When we now apply post structural or deconstruction theory to such things, they come out with nonsensical meaning. Perhaps, one of the very liberal theories in Western critical model is Semiotics which allows you to excavate cultural meanings that are indigenous to your culture from a text.

Professor Nelson Fashina

The point is that we need an indigenous African theoretical model that will enable us to get to the roots of our epistemology and philosophy so that we will not be looked at as people without philosophy, and knowledge of science. Look at the African system of naming, it is very unique. We don’t name our children after inanimate objects like: stones, rock, tree and all that. We name them according to the lineage history and circumstances of their birth. Some people are named after the gods. There is a reason for this. Our people also use Ifa to know the future and the origin of a child. All these things are prognostic, and they speak volumes about the future encounter, the success, and the failure of the child – the archetypal idea of predestination! Such a thing does not take place in the Western postmodern philosophy, excepting of course in their classical literatures!

Q: Why has it been difficult for scholars like you to come up with theories that will be applicable to Nigerian/African situation?

A: It has not been difficult for some of us. When I gave the Faculty of Arts lecture in 2010, I generated eleven categories of theoretical models that can be used to interpret African literature, African oral literature, African indigenous knowledge, and culture and tradition. This seminal research breakthrough has been published, even serialized in some high impact journals in our field abroad. But, they are not used; instead Nigerian or African scholars prefer to cite or reference the research works of Western scholars rather than look inward! But, because they want to sound international, they follow all kinds of Euro-American misguided meanings or interpretations of the African world. To internalise knowledge in this part of the world, we believe that we have to engage Western research methodology, and bring Western scholars into the research problem, goals, objectives, and methodology. We believe that without adopting the Western theories, our research works will not be acceptable.