Professor Pierre Verge

From Wikipedia

Gbogbo ohun ti a bá kọ ní èdè Gẹ̀ẹ́sì ni a gbọ́dọ̀ kọ Yorùbá rẹ̀.
(This article is written in English. It needs to be translated to Yoruba.)

[edit] PIERRE VERGE AND YORUBA STUDIES

Pierre Verger was appointed as a visiting Professor at the Department of African Languages and Literatures in October 1975 but he took up the appointment in March 1976. He was one of the leading scholars of Yoruba studies especially in the area of religion, folk medicine and the Yoruba culture in the New World. He gave many seminars in the Department: His paper on the Yoruba Medicinal Plants was well written with detailed exemplification from the Ifa Literacy Corpus. He also presented another paper on the Yoruba culture in Brazil.

He worked on the identity, meaning and function of the orisa especially as revealed in the Ifa corpus. He planned to publish a Monograph on each of the major orisa but he could not do this before he left.

By the time Professor Verger was at Ife, he was already an old man at 75 but he was still very energetic. He attended departmental meetings and seminars regularly and contributed meaningfully to discussions. He also executed any assignment given to him with dispatch. He was a humble man despite his age and world-wide recognition as an eminent scholar. Although he was at Ife, he was an associate member of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Professor Verger was involved in the teaching of the Yoruba folk medicine component of YOR 303 (Yoruba Civilization, Sociology, Religion and Thought, Art, Music, and Yoruba folk medicine). It was the only course in the Department where students from the Faculty of Health Sciences were enrolled and understandable, because of the medical component.