OAU INAUGURAL LECTURE: Literature Lecturer Speaks On Fiction's societal effects.

Olatunji Samuel.

Professor Chima Anyadike, the Obafemi Awolowo University's 320th Inaugural Lecturer, spoke on the effects of fiction in solving the problems in our society.


“Fiction will lead us to solve our problem in the society especially Africa, our life stories have a great impact on those who we live behind. If we depend on the imagination of fiction story, we cannot gain anything from the story but we should learn from the stories of fiction as a wisdom of the uncertainty and use it to solve our problem” he said

The Professor of English literature said this during the delivery of his lecture tagged “Living our stories in Africa: Fiction Fictionality and the wisdom of uncertainy"


The vice chancellor of the university. Prof. Eyitope Ogunmodede in the company of new registrar, Mrs Omosule , attended the lecture.


The Vice Chancellor started his speech by reading a brief biography of the lecturer. In the words of the number one member of the university community,
“This inaugural lecture is like stories and the lecture will be the best inaugural lecture ever.”




In the lecture which lasted roughly about one and half hours, the lecture highlighted some problems in Africa that fiction as a wisdom of the uncertainty can solve, he gave out the main problem which are disease, ignorance and poverty.

"The writer of fiction depends on the appreciation of works, stories, the more we read stories, the more we put our minds on what we write. Stories in all diverse of life is originated from creative imagination of human experience."

He further said he was inspired by the lecture giving by Chinua Achebe in the same Oduduwa Hall, which he tagged “The truth of fiction” in 1979.

However, he told two great stories at the course of the lecture, the story of tortoise and the leopard and the story of two Chinese monks with some moral lessons learnt from these two stories.


He laid emphasis on how the Africans are losing their values by not writing their fiction in their own indigenous languages

“We should be writing our fiction stories for our school children in indigenous languages, Africa’s voices are weakened in fiction because of the decline in the usage of indigenous languages” the prolific fiction writer said


Professor Chima Anyadike, a professor in Literature in English, graduated from the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife from the faculty of Arts, Department of English and literary studies 1979 and joined the university a year later. He bagged his M.sc in 1981.

 He has received various award home and abroad like China, the United States, among others. He has published over 30 publication around the world. He has supervised over 60 undergraduate’s projects and series of M.sc and Ph.Ds. He is married to Dr. Adebisi Anyadike and blessed with five children.