As a subset of the well-known increasing subordination of the humanities in the academy, there have always been recurrent attempts to territorially contain the discipline of African Studies on the continent. The attempts at containment are sometimes informed by factors that include concerns about contiguous disciplines within the same institution and the formal identification of African Studies with institutes which signs difference to orthodox university faculties and departments. I will cite two examples, temporally separated from each other by almost one century, to illustrate the currency of this internal suspicion. In the decade before independence, one of the earliest attempts at starting an academic department in the discipline at the University College, Ghana, was stymied by the territorial apprehension that “any new institute should not replicate work in the [other] disciplines… and that a new institute should not ‘usurp the research side of all relevant departments’” (Allman, 2013:185).

“African literature has presented a lot of problems especially what is to be considered African literature, in which language it should be written, what it should be about, and who should be considered an African writer“(Ndede, 2016:2). This article discusses the linguistic hegemony of the colonial languages with particular reference to Yoruba. “The Yoruba country lies roughly between latitudes 6° and 9°N and longitudes 2° 30’ and 6° 30’ East. The area spreads across the republics of Benin and Togo. The Yoruba are also found in such places as Sierra Leone, Gambia and across the Atlantic in the Caribbean and South America especially in Brazil” (Atanda, 1996; cited in Salawu, 2004).

According to Arifalo and Ogen, Yoruba people are forty million worldwide and they further assert that the Yoruba ethnic group is one of the biggest in West Africa (Arifalo and Ogen, 2003; cited in Salawu, 2004).