Bolanle Awe
First Nigerian Female Professor of History
Bolanle Awe (28 January 1933) is a Nigerian and Yoruba history Professor. She became the Pro-Chancellor of the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. She has been called a Nigerian "intellectual hero".
Quotes
edit- Once you become president, you have a responsibility because you are now the spokesperson and you speak with one voice, and the powers that be will respect you and listen to you regularly.
- [1] In an interview reported by the guardian media house.
- Africans still suffered the stigma that they were intellectually inferior to the extent that they were considered subhuman and could not understand the gravity of intellectualism, much less talk of contributing to the debate.**[2]
- Creating a passageway for the females to come into the system so that they would correct the wrong values carefully instituted by the Europeans and their African allies after independence.**[{https://tribuneonlineng.com/how-prof-bolanle-awe-corrected-erroneous-notion-that-africans-had-no-recordable-history-prof-toyin-falola/]
- [3] Speaking on how Africans preserved history among generations.
- African traditions are kept and archived in oral medium, and since they are used to that system of historic preservation, the documentation of their existence, history, and accomplishments in that format continued for generations.
Speaking on How African history fit into a fast-changing world altered by digital preferences
- [4] Africa is a geographical landscape, and Africans are the human resources deposited into it. Meanwhile, the digital community and preferences are technology, and technology is a tool. This suggests that African essentialism is not only powered by the existence of technology.
- [5] The primacy of development is that humans can retain their intellectual properties and coordinate their activities as long as they exist in their world. This means that it is a fact that humans exist and that their history also would survive with them.
- [6] African history, to this extent, has nothing to fear, for it can survive situations as long as humans, who are the preservatory instruments, survive. In fact, instead of them to express fear, Africans should accept that their history itself is a force that had the power to survive difficult times, and the fact that it survived every layer of inordinate machinations of the past means that it would survive the future no matter what happens in it.
Speaking on re-evaluating the place of women in African history and Afrofuturism
- [7] Women have always been an exclusive part of the African civilisations, representing themselves and the larger society in moderate percentage, making great economic strides that helped solidify their place in the society, taking a very important position in their societies to the extent that they are indispensable, etc.
- Emerging scholars must mesh multiple ideas,grind them to create new intellectual product.
Quotes about Bolanle Awe
edit"Bolanle Awe is the best of the best" (13 February 2023)
edit‘Best of the best’ — stakeholders celebrate Bolanle Awe, feminist history pioneer, at 90
- “At the time when she was born, Africans still suffered the stigma that they were intellectually inferior to the extent that they were considered subhuman and could not understand the gravity of intellectualism, much less talk of contributing to the debate,” by Toyin Falola
- “On the intellectual front, she corrected the erroneous notions that Africans did not have recordable history, projected by a chain of European generations who even manipulated scientific evidence to substantiate their racist claim." by Toyin Falola
- “With her focus on women, women’s rights, and women’s capacities, Professor Awe led the nation, the continent, and the world at large to an altar of enlightenment about the meaning of gender justice and gender equity,”
- “She is an acclaimed scholar, author, teacher, development specialist, administrator, leader, and mentor. The list of her achievements is endless, and she has a solid legacy of excellence as evidenced in everything she has been involved in throughout her illustrious career,”
- "Professor Bolanle Awe is the quintessential ‘Omoluabi’ whose name, character and conduct has been nothing less than extraordinary.”
Prof. Olufunke Adeboye speaks at conference held in honour of Professor Bolanle Awe
- We are celebrating a female activist. Sometimes Mama was chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) here in UI. She was also a champion of women rights. To so many of us, she has touched our lives. She practically mentored many of us. Even in old age, she has continued to publish.
