TEMITOPE DAVID-ADEGBOYE and MARY OGEDENGBE make a discerning observation of the engagingly erudite linguist, Professor Remi Sonaiya
Professor Remi Sonaiya’s mother had her own perspective about how her daughter should develop. Medicine, in mum’s opinion, would be the suitable profession. The mother’s conclusion was based on the young woman’s precocious academic performance in school. However, independent-minded even at that age, the future professor had other ideas for a career path.
Professor Remi Sonaiya
Fortunately, mother and daughter brokered an amicable truce. Sonaiya recalls the settlement being on the lines that she could still have the prefix “Dr.” without necessarily becoming a medical doctor. The road to a doctoral programme was mapped out very early. Sweet compromise!
The decision as to which discipline to specialise in came about fortuitously. The intervention of a teacher at school induced a life-long passion for French language studies. The tutor was a delightful young British lady who was posted to her school in Ibadan. The young expatriate must have been a natural with an endearing touch. From here, Sonaiya developed a life-long passion for linguistics.
She has also gone on to teach languages. Having obtained her doctorate in linguistics at the highly rated Ivy League, Cornell University in the United States, she retired as a professor, having taught the French language and applied linguistics for nearly 30 years.
It’s been quite a fulfilling career laden with honours. For example, yet another recognition came in 2008 when she was named an international ambassador scientist of the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation. In 2010, she published with critical acclaim A Trust to Earn: Reflections on life and leadership in Nigeria.
Throughout her quietly achieving professional life, she has been surrounded by the academia. At home, her life-long companion has been Professor Babafunso Sonaiya. She has fused her intellectual pursuits with the responsibilities of mother and wife admirably well. A good illustration is when she studied in the United States.
Her first time in the U.S. was when she was pursuing a master’s degree. She had a supportive husband with her during the pursuit. However, when she later went back for her doctorate, she had to do it without her other half.
The second time around was a different ball game. The U.S. is a high cost place. Being a teaching assistant in French while pursuing her doctorate certainly helped. The university provided $650 a month and paid the tuition fees of about $20,000. With two kids with her at Cornell, $650 was certainly not a king’s ransom.
Her description of her interaction with the American social safety net is instructive.
“The house took $350; that is without eating, telephone, etc. The kids had not started school. One was four while the other was two; that made babysitting necessary when I went to school. The babysitter took $250 a month.
“What saved us was that the first child, that is our son, had been born in the states while we were studying there for the first time; my husband was doing his Ph.D while I was doing my master’s. So he is an American citizen. The Americans do not want their citizens to die of hunger, so they have a system of food stamps. They assessed my situation and obviously I was living far below the poverty line. They gave me a certain amount – they are like cheques and they are called food stamps – per month, to buy food for the family; so that at least we could eat. It was the poorest of the poor who use food stamps. So I go to the supermarket, I collect food, get to the counter and present my food stamps and people around are looking at you like: oh this is one of the very poor ones. But I did not care because I knew why I was there and I knew that it would not be forever.”
In retirement, the doting grandmother is still very much as sharp as nails. Having spent her working life in the academia, she is not surprisingly perturbed about the rot in that sector. Starting with her own discipline, she is firmly of the opinion that the earlier children got introduced to languages, the better.
She tried, without a great deal of success, to get her own university, many years ago, to make the learning of a foreign language compulsory for all undergraduates. In a contracting economy trapped in jobless ‘growth’, there is bound to be resistance to this position. The standard retort, as she wearily points out, being: Oh, there is no money to do that; oh, the time is not yet ripe.
The contradiction here is obvious. In a globalised world, it is very important to pay more attention to foreign languages. For example, Brighton College, a leading private co-educational school in England, has made the study of Chinese compulsory. This makes sense, for China is going to be a pivotal player in international trade in the years ahead.
As she pointed out: “The UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) set up a committee to look at what they could come up with as recommendations for that body in terms of the kind of education that the young people of the world needed to have, so that that would inform their policies and strategies going, for especially with the new millennium, and one of the recommendations made by that committee, we actually call them the Forum of Reflection, was that the young people of the world needed to pay more attention to foreign languages. I mean it is so self-evident that barriers are breaking down, people are travelling; you find Nigerians everywhere, in China, Japan and so forth. I think it is just so obviously an issue that should have occupied our minds and our attention more readily.”
Professor Sonaiya is a practising Christian. There is, however, a caveat. She is clearly apprehensive about some of what is going on out there under the banner of Christianity.
“I just want to know that we must engage with things. There is something that is happening in Christendom right now – cursing. Have you been in churches where they curse? It was somebody that said if you do not want to follow the path that the leader of your religion set down, you can go and create your own religion. You are free to start reminiscing or something like that, but do not say you are a Christian and fooling yourself by not going the way of God. So, we have got to think, we have got to be critical. The pastors are preaching nonsense, many of them. I have had occasion to walk out of the church,” she disclosed.