Prof. Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah was born in multicultural and multilingual Ilorin in northern Nigeria. He received Quranic education, and later attended elementary schools in Ilorin and in Sokoto. He was a Boy Scout in elementary school, and became Troop Leader of the 1st Birnin Yauri Troop in the 1979/80 academic session. Later, he trained as a Grade II teacher at the Government Teachers College in Birnin Yauri (now renamed Federal Government College Birnin-Yauri), where he graduated in 1981. Prof. Na’Allah taught for the Ilorin schools board from 1981 - 1984. In 1984 he attended the University of Ilorin, where he received his B.A. (Hons) in Education and English in 1988. In 1989 he completed the Nigerian Youth Service Corps at University of Ilorin, in the Department of Modern European Languages. Between 1989 and 1994, he was a teacher at the University of Ilorin in oral literature, African literature, English, and practical phonetics (Hausa). In April 1992 he received his M.A. Literature in English from the University of Ilorin. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, in 1999.
Both as a student and in his professional life Prof. Na’Allah actively engaged in civic activities. He was President of the Progressive Unity Club, Ilorin, between 1980-1983. Between 1986 and 1993, Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah organized, presented and moderated a literary and current affairs discussion program, Focal Point, on Radio Kwara, a state government short and medium-wave radio station. Among those featured were Dapo Adelugba, Zulu Sofola, Niyi Osundare, David Cook, and Olu Obafemi. While a graduate student in the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Alberta, he was General Secretary (1995-97) and later President (1997-98) of Nigeria Union of Students (NUS). He was also co-founder and the first Coordinator (1997-98) of the Africa Society at the University of Alberta. Abdul-Rasheed continued his pioneering practices by founding the Creative Writers Society at Western Illinois University in 1998.
Prof. Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah has done extensive research into traditional oral forms of literature on Africa. He firmly believes that African tradition must inform any effort to mobilize the African peoples for sustainable development. He argues that most people who claim to speak for Africa, especially in the West, do not really know Africa. However, such knowledge is needed to contextualize their yearnings for the continent. He writes of researchers into Africa oral literature: “iIt is an interesting fact that despite the vibrant and varied practice of oral performance throughout Africa, scholars of oral tradition, especially Western scholars (but not excluding teachers of oral literature in African universities), insist on imposing foreign criteria on traditional African performances. Instead of allowing oral forms to speak with their own voices, academic researchers of orature are eager to show that traditional African forms observe the same laws of genre (i.e., the epic, the lyric, and panegyric) and style (i.e., narrative structure, metaphor and images) that exist in Western literature. African oral forms are gradually being forced to conform to non-oral conventions in classrooms.”(“Interpretations of African Orature” (Comparative Poetics, #17, 1997, p. 125-6). As a graduate student activist in Edmonton, Abdul-Rasheed helped mobilize the boycott of Shell Oil in Nigeria, and led demonstrations in Edmonton and Calgary demanding that Shell pull out of Nigeria. He also helped to mobilize support to get the Canadian Government to do more about human rights issues in Nigeria. In a book he edited as a response to the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists by the military government in Nigeria, he writes, “Slavery was vehemently defended for centuries by those who benefitted from it, exactly as Shell Oil defends its atrocities in Nigeria. International trade is not an aberration. There is nothing wrong with Shell or any international company doing business in any part of the world. But when such business is being done as a game of re-enslavement, conscientious peoples of the world, as their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers must ask questions and insist on answers.” (“Introduction” Ogoni’s Agonies, 1998, p. 27).
Prof. Na’Allah was awarded the 2009 Cathy O'Neill Couza Award for Outstanding Leadership in Diversity by Western Illinois University; nominated for the 2009 Carnegie Scholars Program grant; received the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry 2008-2009 Grant for Martin Luther King, Jr. Poetry Anthology; and WIU’s Administrative Achievement Award 2008-2009 for achievements as department chair. He was awarded Western Illinois University 2008 Certificate of Recognition for length of service to the university; inducted into The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi Membership 2008; awarded an Intel Corporation grant for research on socialization among Nigerian Muslims in June 2007; and an Intel Corporation grant for Technology/Nigeria Informal Education research in January 2007. Professor Na’Allah was nominated for the 2007 Carnegie Scholars Program grant; and received other numerous awards, including the Gold Key Recognition Award, University of Alberta Student Union, 1998; the Graduate Student Service Award, GSA, University of Alberta; The Alberta Heritage Charles S Noble Award for Student Leadership, 1998, the Province of Alberta, Canada; and was awarded the Black Achievements Award, Post-Secondary—Scholastic in 1998 by the Black Achievement Awards Society of Alberta, Canada.
Prof. Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah is a poet, scholar and critical thinker. He is the author and co-author of numerous books, including: author, African Discourse in Islam, Oral Traditions, and Performance (Routledge, 2010); Africanity, Islamicity, and Performativity: Identity in the House of Ilorin (Bayreuth African Studies, 2009); Ahmadu Fulani: African Poetry (Africa World Press, 2004); Almajiri: A New African Poetry (AWP, 2001); editor of The People’s Poet: Emerging Perspectives on Niyi Osundare (AWP, 2003) and Ogoni’s Agonies: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria (AWP, 1998); coauthor with Bayo Ogunjimi, Introduction to African Oral Literature and Performance (AWP, 2005); and with Ladan Sulaiman and Ahmad Sambo, Functional Literacy Primer in Hausa, sponsored by the European Economic Commission and Federal Government of Nigeria, 1992; coauthor, Instructors’s Guide to Functional Literacy Primer in Hausa, 1992; among other books. A sample of Prof. Na’Allah’s scholarly papers published in peer-refereed scholarly journals world-wide include: “Interpretation of African Orature: Oral Specificity and Literary Analysis” in Journal of Comparative Poetics 17 (1997): 125-42. Egypt; “The Origin of Egungun: A Critical Literary Appraisal” in African Monographs 17.2 (1996): 59-68, Japan; “African Literature and Postcolonialism: Projections into the Twenty-First Century” in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 22.3 (1995): 569-85. Canada; “Muslim Women and Ilorin Traditional Oral Poetry” in The Literary Griot 7.1 /2 (1995): 101-12. USA; “The Influence of Traditional Oral Poetry on Modern Religions (Islam and Christianity) Among the Yoruba (Nigeria)” in Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blatter 6 (1994): 65-74. Germany; “Oral traditions, Islamic Culture and Topicality in the Songs of Mamman Shata Katsina and Omoekee Amao Ilorin” in Canadian Journal of African Studies 28.3 (1994): 500-15, Canada; “Dadakuada as One of the Oral Forms of Ilorin” in African Notes 1994, Nigeria; and “Vowel Length in Hausa” in Language Learning Journal 3 (1991): 84-85, England; among others. Prof. Na’Allah is currently completing a new book on “Cultural Plurality, Africa and the New World.”
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