BRAZIL RAISE AN AFRICAN LANGUAGE, YORUBA AS AN OFFICIAL LANGUAGE
The Brazilian government has given Yoruba pride of place among the languages spoken in the country.
According to the Brazilian Minister of Culture, Dr Sérgio Sá leitão, the government has introduced compulsory study of African history and the Yoruba language in primary and secondary school curricula.
The minister spoke at an event where the Institute of African Studies at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, presented important dignitaries, including Nigerian artists and historians, as well as culture teachers. and tradition.
According to him, the inclusion of African history and the Yoruba language in the curriculum would help bring the Brazilian African people closer to their roots and encourage understanding of the language among other important languages of Brazil except Portuguese. which is the official language.
The Minister also referred to the role played by Brazil during the arts and culture festival, FESTAC 77, held in Lagos (Nigeria) in 1977; the constant intercultural programs between Nigeria and Brazil; the annual Carnival of Arts, Music and Cultural Exhibitions featuring prominent African artists and Yoruba writers such as Yinka Shonibare, Adeyinka Olaiya and El Anatsui, among which the highly respected Yoruba writer, Professor Wande Abimbola.
Speaking at the event, Peruvian Nobel Laureate Prof. Mário Vargas Llosa also mentioned the African community in Peru where African Peruvians have settled to this day.
Vargas Llosa, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, is known as one of Latin America’s most important novelists and essayists and one of the leading authors of his generation.
According to Vargas Llosa, the Yoruba people and their culture have helped the universe, the IFA has proven its existence in human beings from the start and the IFA is still very much alive and needs to be recognized even more than it is. is today.
According to Professor Mário Vargas, the Yoruba language should no longer be seen as an ethnic language but as a universal language living in the culture and tradition of Africans and its roots in the universe.
Speaking in Yoruba and Portuguese, Professor Katiuscia Ribeiro of the Institute of African Studies drew attention to African philosophical practices introducing the consistent representation of Yoruba culture and religion into traditional Brazilian beliefs.
The traditional Yoruba religion has today become the most improved religious practice in Brazil after Catholic practices. Several houses of worship called “ILE ASE” have Yoruba culture, tradition and language as official, whenever services are declared open for the day. Babalawo, Iyalawo, Omo Awo and Aborisa are all common uses of the Yoruba in the practice of the Yoruba religion called Candomblé in Brazil.
Nigerian Carnival Artist, Painter and Illustrator Adeyinka Olaiya also expressed the benefits the Yoruba language would bring to Brazilian culture if fully integrated into the Brazilian educational curriculum.
According to Olaiya, living in El Salvador, Brazil, is like living in one of the western states of Nigeria, where the Yoruba are predominantly located.
He said: “Most of the cultures and traditions in evidence in Brazil are all legacies brought to the Latin American country by the majority of Yoruba families, victims of BARCO NEGREIROS, the NEGRO BOAT which forcefully brought the slaves west- Africans in Brazil. Yoruba heritage, which represents the majority of African cultural practices in Brazil, has several words in Yoruba roots. Akara, Dendê, Iyalode, Babalawo, Iyalawo and many others all come from Yoruba roots.
