From Festivals to Paternity Fraud: Olusegun Olatunji’s Evolution in Historical Research

By Adachukwu Obi

Olusegun Olatunji’s interest in history has driven him to use the past to reconstruct contemporary happenings and occurrences. He focuses on incidents from the past that scholars have either overlooked or erroneously discussed, particularly in the field of gender and cultural norms.

Olusegun graduated with his master’s degree from East Tennessee State University in May 2023. Originally from the small town of Yewaland in Ogun State, Nigeria, Olusegun had several accomplishments before relocating to the United States a few years ago to further his education.

In 2010, Olusegun began his first degree in history and international studies at the University of Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. While industrial action was and remains a significant concern for students in Nigerian tertiary institutions, especially those in government institutions, often resulting in students spending six or more years on a four-year degree program, Olusegun managed to graduate within the stipulated time in 2014.

He recalls that during his college days, he was exposed to historical accounts from different parts of the world, ranging from precolonial to colonial and postcolonial eras. These classes, according to him, were eye-openers and provided insights into state formation, social and economic development, war, diplomacy, international politics, and governance.

Olusegun’s academic pursuits were not limited to the classroom. In his penultimate year, he took a class on the French Revolution, which exposed him to how mismanagement of scarce resources in France was a major factor leading to the revolution of 1789.

This experience fueled his interest in contesting against one of his course mates for the office of financial secretary. Despite a close and tight election process, Olusegun emerged victorious. His year-long tenure as financial secretary strengthened his interactions with people and broadened his perspective on life and politics.

After graduation in 2014, Olusegun was posted to Nasarawa State University, Keffi, for his one-year mandatory National Youth Service Corps program. He began in the history department and later completed his service at the registrar’s office at the registrar’s request.

During the three-week camping period before his university posting, Olusegun volunteered with the Millennium Development Goals (now Sustainable Development Goals) organization. His involvement with the MDG, both as a volunteer and as an executive member for his Community Development Service during his service year, reignited his interest in social and environmental development.

Armed with his experience volunteering at MDG, his background in history, and his interest in social and environmental norms, Olusegun returned to his alma mater in 2016 to pursue a master’s degree in Peace and Development Studies.

At the Center for Peace, he explored and completed thesis research on the role played by Interpol in the management of international borders, particularly focusing on child trafficking.

The porous nature of borders in Africa, despite their interconnectivity with international borders, led Olusegun to focus his research on the Seme-Border, a region between Nigeria and Benin Republic.

After his graduation in 2018, Olusegun was certain about three things: he wanted to pursue a PhD, he desired a career in academia, and he was done with the Nigerian education system. Consequently, pursuing a PhD in Nigeria wasn’t an option for him.

Before starting his master’s degree in history at East Tennessee State University, Olusegun had already determined the type of research he wanted to explore. This decision was influenced by his discovery of primary data at the National Archives in Ibadan, which helped him formulate a strong argument and critique on the existence of gender across precolonial and colonial Africa, contrary to the arguments of various existing scholars.

With cultural and social norms at the forefront of his research interests, Olusegun revisited the distant past to reconstruct both the colonial and contemporary periods, especially issues relating to gender.

Armed with the necessary primary data, Olusegun hit the ground running immediately after starting at ETSU, producing various essays and presentations. He attended two major conferences in Texas and Nigeria, where he presented his research.

The feedback from these conferences helped him think outside the box, leading to a concrete argument for his thesis titled “Powerful and Powerless: Reconfiguring the Agency and Supremacy of Women in Selected Festivals in the Yoruba Town of Isaga Orile, 1900-1958.”

Olusegun’s research is particularly timely as it contributes to the enthralling conversation on how colonialism transformed social and political institutions in Africa but not cultural institutions.

He explores how gender dynamics and religious festivals such as Gelede and Oro among the Yoruba people were not significantly affected by colonialism but were instrumental in showing dominance by males and females in traditional societies, contrary to the position of existing scholars.

Olusegun reveals that the argument on the existence of gender and/or the lack of it in the precolonial and colonial eras is a global phenomenon among scholars across continents.

Most existing studies on gender and the role of women before and during the colonial period either relegate the role played by women or argue that gender was a colonial creation that did not exist across cultural communities of the world. However, Olusegun’s research shows otherwise and challenges these existing arguments.

Elaborating on his future plans, Olusegun confirms that his research interest in cultural and social history remains intact. However, his focus is shifting from the use of cultural norms such as festivals to demonstrate what existed or did not exist in the precolonial period, to more interesting common phenomena that affect societies globally, such as paternity fraud.

This phenomenon has not been given much attention from a historical perspective, whereas a historical understanding could help grasp how to ameliorate it, if not prevent it entirely.

Cases of paternity fraud remain a global enigma ravaging homes with implications ranging from psychological, mental, emotional, financial, and political consequences. Indeed, scholars and policymakers often focus on its immediate causes in the contemporary period and/or since the advent of DNA testing while neglecting the root causes.

As a precolonial historian, Olusegun is interested in understanding its root cause. He believes that understanding the root cause can guide policymakers to make informed decisions to nip the problem in the bud.

Paying attention to the historical dynamics of paternity fraud also has a global impact on genetics studies.

Olusegun posits that one aspect of being a historian is that sometimes one visits archives looking for a particular document only to return with an entirely new discovery.

While he has been following paternity fraud trends dominating social media spaces across different regions globally, and observing how DNA is becoming a dreaded topic of conversation among families, he recently collected documents from national archives not only in Nigeria but also in the US and the UK on cases of paternity fraud.

His abstract submitted to the forthcoming Africa Studies Association conference in San Francisco this December was accepted for presentation. This conference is the largest gathering of scholars of African studies globally. Olusegun mentioned that he is interested in continuing this line of inquiry for his PhD degree.

He further complicates his interest in paternity fraud by exploring the traditional and cultural approaches adopted by indigenous societies to determine the paternity of a child before the colonial encounter.

Additionally, he seeks to understand how the introduction of colonial laws and scientific methods impacted these “native” laws and customs surrounding paternity and legitimacy.

Due to its global nature, Olusegun is examining the histories of the Atlantic World and African diaspora, centering on the voices of children and women from the mid-seventeenth century, with a specific focus on the Afro-Caribbean populations of Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, and Cuba.

By adopting a transnational approach, he aims to explore the relationship between the Yoruba people of Nigeria and their African diaspora counterparts in the Caribbean region, a connection forged by the transatlantic slave trade.