Ekiti State Deputy Governor, Prof Modupe Adelabu (middle), beaming with smile while Wife of the Governor, Erelu Bisi Fayemi (right) and the Director General, Centre for Black African Arts & Culture (CBAC), Lagos, Prof. Tunde Babawale exchange pleasantries at the Colloquium organised to celebrate EKIFEST 2013 at Adetiloye Hall, Trade Fair Complex, Ado-Ekiti.
The adoption of mother tongue as the mode of communication and the use of traditional attire by children in Yoruba land took the centre stage at a colloquium Deputy Chairman Professor Modupe Adelabu, who chaired the event urged parents to encourage their children to always use their local dialect to preserved culture and tradition for generations yet unborn.
The colloquium entitled: “Arts, Culture and Tourism: Tools for Social Transformation,” drew the likes of Prof Tunde Babawale, the
Director-General, Centre for African Arts and Culture (CBAC), Prof Remi Sonaiya of the Department of Modern European Languages and Chief Abiodun Duro-Ladipo, the widow of the late theatre icon, Chief Duro Ladipo.
Organised by the Ministry of Arts Culture & Tourism as part of activities marking the 2013 Ekiti State Festival of (EKIFESTS 2013) at
the Adetiloye Hall, Trade Fair Complex, Ado-Ekiti, also had in attendance the wife of Ekiti State Governor, Mrs Bisi Fayemi.
In her remark at the end of the colloquium, Prof. Adelabu, lamented the cultural adulteration which according to her, infiltrated Yoruba culture and made the children alien to the rich Yoruba heritage.
She urged parents to speak local dialects to their children at home and motivate them to also adorn traditional hairdo, blaming parents who valued foreign cultures above their own culture as the real cause of cultural relegation by the Yoruba race.
Adelabu also charged parents to let their children know that prostration and kneeling down are the most respective and acceptable
Yoruba ways of greeting one’s parents and adults for boys and girls.
She spoke of the need to also teach children body languages and eye contact communications, even as she admonished participants to refrain from describing cultural festivals, marriage and naming traditional and cultures as fetish.
The deputy governor urged them to see such practices as ways of preserving the rich Yoruba cultural heritage for posterity.
Last modified: December 11, 2013
