Adebayo Akomolafe

Kogi, Nigeria

Profile Campaigns

One word goes a long way to capture the restlessness of Bayo – subversion. Born in 1983 to Nigerian parents, Bayo’s lifelong quest for absolute ‘truth’ was his most cherished preoccupation as a pioneer undergraduate in the then new Covenant University, Nigeria. His Christian upbringing deeply influenced his imagination, and inspired his decision to study human behaviour and, later, to specialize in Clinical Psychology. He graduated summa cum laude in 2006 (and has remained the only male graduate to do so since then), and returned to his alma mater to teach and pursue a postgraduate degree in Clinical Psychology. It was during his clinical training (at the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Enugu, eastern Nigeria) that he chanced upon new strains of thought that completely unravelled his quest for ‘absolute truth’. Shaken to his intellectual core, Bayo now holds a largely participatory view about the world – one in which the notion of ‘truth’ is stripped of its pretensions to universal validity. His alter-modern suspicions of ‘knowledge’, ‘development’, ‘progress’ and ‘truth’ as Eurocentric metanarratives led him (and his wife, Ej) to develop the first International Workshop on Alternative Research Paradigms and Indigenous Knowledge Promotion (WARP, 2011). His writings and publications have taken him to multiple conferences and counter-cultural events around the world. He initiated a book project called ‘We will tell our stories: Reimagining the Social Sciences in Africa’ in 2011, and is currently publishing the book with Professors Molefi Asante (USA), Augustine Nwoye (South Africa) and Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), among other African intellectuals. Bayo is co-founder of Koru, co-designer of Dreamscape, Kalengo (a reality television concept based on community activity), and the Dreamweavers’ Network. He was appointed Visiting Scientist to Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (UK) in February 2012, and is also a member of the Global Cooperative Forum in Switzerland. His most abiding interests involve the idea of civilizational transitions, localization, the multidimensionality and paradox of ‘reality’, consciousness and being, entheogens (psychedelics), the idea of play as a performative consciousness-altering technology, indigenous learning and community, extra-terrestrial civilizations, failure as an alternative way of being outside the normative characterizations of success, and the possibility of other worlds caught in the Arundhatian rhetoric – “another world is possible”. He is currently writing two novels with his ‘life-force’ (Ej) – called ‘The Boy who stayed Outside’ and ‘And we shall dance on the Mountains’, the latter explores his experiences investigating indigenous alternatives to mainstream mental healthcare delivery in a Yoruba community in Nigeria. He holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology. While he remains in the university system (a framework he believes is becoming obsolete), he is most excited to direct a well-funded initiative called ‘The iFund’ (from the David Oyedepo Foundation), which is designed to re-engineer student identity as active co-creators of change, and not merely passive recipients of instruction. His most fervent passions are Ej, India, drawing, singing, writing, designing, speaking, and travelling.

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