Born
Prof.
ADE-AJAYI
Jacob
Jacob Festus Adeniyi Ajayi, commonly known as J. F. Ade Ajayi, (26 May 1929 – 9 August 2014) was a Nigerian historian and a member of the Ibadan school, a group of scholars interested in introducing African perspectives to African history and focusing on the internal historical forces that shaped African lives.[1] Ade Ajayi favours the use of historical continuity more often than focusing on events only as powerful agents of change that can move the basic foundations of cultures and mould them into new ones.[2] Instead, he sees many critical events in African life, sometimes as weathering episodes which still leave some parts of the core of Africans intact.[3] He also employs a less passionate style in his works, especially in his early writings, using subtle criticism of controversial issues of the times.
Jacob Festus Adeniyi Ajayi, commonly known as J. F. Ade Ajayi, (26 May 1929 – 9 August 2014) was a Nigerian historian and a member of the Ibadan school, a group of scholars interested in introducing African perspectives to African history and focusing on the internal historical forces that shaped African lives.[1] Ade Ajayi favours the use of historical continuity more often than focusing on events only as powerful agents of change that can move the basic foundations of cultures and mould them into new ones.[2] Instead, he sees many critical events in African life, sometimes as weathering episodes which still leave some parts of the core of Africans intact.[3] He also employs a less passionate style in his works, especially in his early writings, using subtle criticism of controversial issues of the times.
As an early writer of Nigerian and African history, though not a pioneer like Kenneth Dike, Ajayi brought considerable respect to the Ibadan School and African research. He is known for the arduous research and rigorous effort he puts into his work. By extensive use of oral sources in some of his works such as pre-twentieth century Yoruba history, he was able to weigh, balance and assay each and all of his sources, uncovering a pathway towards facts in the period which was scarce in written and non-prejudiced forms.[16] Ajayi also tries to be dispassionate in his writings, especially when writing about controversial or passionate subjects in African history. In an article on the history of Yoruba writing, he was able to appraise critically and with resignation, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a hero to Ade Ajayi. His style of rigorous research presented new pathways in African historiography and augmented awareness among scholarly circles outside the continent to African methodologies and perceptions. By weighing sources both written and oral, he was able to find new issues of interest that formed the basis of British colonisation of Lagos, balancing official British documentation of the event with additional material.
Another theme in many of his works is nationalism. Ajayi sees religious currents as setting the foundation for modern Nigerian nationalism. The Fulani Jihad of the early twentieth century set a basis for a common front, while Christian missionaries such as Christian Missionary Society (CMS), had laid the foundation for a movement towards unity in the south. The missionaries also established schools that created a new educated class who later broke with the Europeans and fought for a new social and political order. However, the new order embraced European contemporary social, political and economic structures as ideals of the new society.[17]
Ajayi, however, with gradation has expressed a much more critical stance on the need to embrace Pan-Africanism as the foundation of nationalism.
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