African Riddles and Their Pedagogical Values: The Yorùbá Example

The National Policy on Education (2013) as well as the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999) has brought to the fore the need to use Nigerian languages for national discourse and development. This is to begin with the employment of the language of immediate environment for the teaching-learning exercise at the early stage of primary education and the recognition of Hausa, Igbo and Yorùbá as National languages to complement English in the future. Early education acquired through the medium of the mother tongue or language of the immediate environment is capable of enhancing better understanding and developing the pupils’ curiosity and love for education, their environment and the nation at large. Early level educators in mother tongue and parents understand the place of native riddles, folktales and rhymes both as sources of education and means of getting the learners set for learning new concepts. Unfortunately, these important mores are going into extinction as elders andor parents no longer have time to tell stories and perform folktales for the children. Besides, there are overwhelming numbers of private primary schools where mother tongue is not even used in teaching pupils at any class. This development contrasts sharply with the past practice by the traditional Africans and more precisely the Yorùbá who imparted their amiable cultural values to their younger ones through poetic or narrative riddles, folktales and other cultural practices designed to impart knowledge, wisdom and understanding from generation to generation. Against this backdrop, this paper demonstrates the need for a reversal. Four different kinds of narrative riddles purposively selected from Raji’s (2002)Àrọ̀Jíjá constitute the data. These are: (1) Ikún Ni Òun le Sọ Ẹ̀pà Mẹ́fà di Ẹgbẹ̀fà (The Squirrel Boasts that he could Turn Six Groundnuts to One Hundred and Twenty Naira),(2) Àkàsọ̀àtiÒgiri(The Wall and the Ladder), (3) Apẹ̀tẹ̀bí (Apẹ̀tẹ̀bí) and, (4) Kínni n Jẹ́Ẹwẹ(What is Ẹwẹ?). The data is analyzedvia the theoretical frame work of Cultural Theory. The paper finds out that riddles satisfactorily teach children distinct cultural and educative values aimed at maintaining serenity and tranquility in the society and foster their growth and development into enviable future adults. It concludes that extinction of riddle has grave implications on the nation and recommends that it is employed to educate the children for future felicity.