Speech of the President, Pragmatics Association of Nigeria at the Seventh Conference of the Association on the 2nd of July, 2024

The Vice Chancellor, Federal University, Lokoja, Professor Olayemi Akinwumi; Distinguished Senator Dino Melaye, all principal officers of the university present, including deans and heads of departments; all keynote speakers: Professor Ruth Wodak of the University of Lancaster, United Kingdom and the University of Vienna, Austria; Professor Dorien Van De Mieroop of KU Leuven, Belgium and Professor Sola Babatunde of the University of Ilorin; all PrAN executive members (core and expanded) present physically and virtually; the National Organising Committee Chair, Professor Olatunde Ayodabo, the LOC Chair, Dr Tosin Olagunju; all NOC (National Organising Committee) and LOC members, distinguished members of PrAN, colleagues, students, ladies and gentlemen of the press; ladies and gentlemen.
It is with utmost joy and excitement that I welcome everyone to this last outing of mine in the capacity of the president of our great association. It is a huge role that I have played substantively for six pioneering years now. The years, marked by path-finding, self-developed ‘navigators’, co-operated with committed individuals, sometimes in the executive committee; sometimes not; international and local consultation board members and elders of the association. All my international mentors on the board are appreciated, but I am particularly grateful to Professor Jan Ola Ostman formerly of the University of Helsinki, Finland and former president of the International Pragmatics Association; and Professor Jef Verschueren of the University of Antwerp, Belgium (the Secretary General of the International Pragmatics Association) for helping me to bring into life my long-conceived idea of a pragmatics group in Nigeria, vented first to Professor Esther Ugwu at the NESA (Nigeria English Studies Association, now English Studies Association of Nigeria) conference of 2011 at the University of Benin, and discussed afterwards with my mentors, Professors Wale Adegbite, Yisa Kehinde Yusuf and Sola Babatunde, several colleagues and my postgraduate students particularly Dr Simeon Ajiboye and Dr Ezekiel Olajimbiti, most especially between 2013 and 2014 after I had met Professor Jan Ola Ostman both in India at the conference of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) and at the University of Freiburg, Germany, where we were both external members of the Professor Peter Auer team. Some more colleagues, including Professor Pius Akhimien, expressed concern for the establishment of the Nigerian group in 2015. Up to that time, I knew the formation of the group was not ripe, and, therefore, only had to encourage concerned individuals to brainstorm together and/or wait watchfully. The right time presented itself when I was at Belfast, Northern Ireland, in July, 2017 for another conference of IPrA; then, I had the strong word of Professor Verschueren for the IPrA support for the Nigerian group when formed. With this international assurance, on October, 17, 2017, I called the first meeting of my generation of scholars and below (including some PhD students), after consulting with key seniors who decided to keep their support in the background while we took the clearing steps. Another meeting where the pioneer executive committee members, with a six-year term following the IPrA model, were elected held in January, 2018.
Today’s opening ceremony, and the encasing conference, is unique in several ways. This is the first time in the history of PrAN that a Vice Chancellor would bid for our conference to be hosted by a department in his university. That shows a high-level commitment to scholarship and confirms the internationality of the Vice-Chancellor of Federal University Lokoja. It is thus a singular action executed in the service of academic excellence which Professor Olayemi Akinwumi iconises. And with this quality, he deserves the maiden excellence award of our association. Another touch of the uniqueness of this conference is its praxeological nature, which calls for the involvement of excellent theoreticians and the experienced partisan politician. Leadership cannot be said to have been dealt with only with the principles of our pragmatics theories; it calls on us to hear the voice of our data, the feeder of the principles of pragmatics; the partisanship in relayed, re-enacted action. In this regard, we deeply appreciate Distinguished Senator Dino Melaye who graciously accepted our invitation, my personal insistence on a renowned politician strictly of Kogi State origin, to play that role. Our dear Distinguished Senator also deserves our award, which is not given for financial reward or recognition, but rather from our guts as a show of appreciation for his pragmatic decision to glide along with our community of practice at no cost at all to the association. Professor Ruth Wodak and Dorien Van De Mieroop are first-rate international scholars, who are not easy in any way to fetch. I owe their participation to my international mentor, boss and friend, Professor Teun van Dijk who personally spoke with Professor Ruth Wodak (one of the three canonical strands on which CDA stands) and who encouraged me to expect a positive word from Professor Dorien Van De Mieroop. These two highly international giants eminently deserve our awards as a token of our appreciation to them. Lastly, our own Professor Sola Babatunde is deeply appreciated for accepting to be part of the keynote ‘crew’, an action done in support of the consolidation of his ‘baby’, PrAN being a baby to him and a few elders I earlier mentioned.
Since the inception of the association, we have swum in a competitive sea of strong and extremely influential cognate associations in a thick ‘political’ cloud. Our survival and excellence strategies have included the following, namely: clinging on to God as our vision-owner, pursuing strictly pragmatics-based agendas, and obsessively exploring capacity development as a strong priority. PrAN can thus be best described as an association whose wheels are knowledge-powered; and that is my sole message to the new executive committee. Be prepared to pursue all the three principles of airplane piloting in the context of pragmatics and a delicately-woven membership fabric: aviate, navigate and communicate (ANC).
We remain grateful to our international colleagues who delivered keynote speeches in our conferences and gave talk in our international guest lecture series between inception and 2023: Professor Nana Aba Appiah Amfo (University of Ghana), Professor Jef Verschueren (AntwerP University, Belgium), The late Professor Jacob Mey (University of Southern Denmark), Professor Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University, United Kingdom), Professor Sigurd D’hondt (University of Jyvaskyla, Finland), Professor Anita Fetzer (University of Augsburg, Germany), Professor Eric Anchimbe (Bayreuth University, Germany), Professor Teun Van Dijk (Centre of Discourse Studies, Barcelona, Spain) and Professor Miriam Locher (Basel University, Switzerland).
I congratulate Professor Pius Akhimien, my dear secretary, the national Secretary of PrAN, on his emergence as the new president of PrAN. I extend the same word to other exco members. They came on board via a keen competition in a thickly partisan-like political landscape with all its true tracks, bits of everything that the larger Nigerian-national politics exhibits, but without rigging and other forms of malpractice embossed. It was all a pragmatic matter, managed effectively pragmatically. And there lies the dynamism of PrAN and our distinguished discipline, Pragmatics. I thank the electoral committee led by Professor Sola Babatunde for organising such an excellent election. It is a process to remember and learn from, its lessons being not just professional and pragmatic but also social and moral.
Our journal, Research in Pragmatics, has remained vibrant. This is due to the commitment of the Chair of our Publication Committee, Professor Olatunde Ayodabo, the elderly PrANist whose loyalty and service to my tenure is distinct; the ICT team led by Dr James Akinola and other members of the editorial team. I appreciate the teeming membership of PrAN. You have provided the atmosphere in which I served for six years. Without God’s and your support, I would not have done anything. I strongly encourage you to strongly support the new executive which must shine and excel; they have no luxury for the opposite!
In this opening ceremony, we will launch the latest issue of our journal, not because a journal must be launched, a professional fact we are aware of, but because the issue is commemorative and the launching comes with a growth-sensitive agenda as will mentioned by the chair of our publication team soon.
We are extremely grateful to the Vice Chancellor for proving to us that ‘promise’ can be a realizable pragmatic act, achieved with all its felicity conditions. The association truly feels the weight, magnanimity, force and standard of the Vice Chancellor in the overall conference organisation, accommodation and transportation support and other key logistical aspects.
As a principle, I do not take prominence in a role once eminently played and a position once held. My support for the exco is sincerely pledged and intact, but behind the scene and on consultation. We must see the new executive committee; we must see the new faces; we must see the new leaders; we must see the new actions, while we all support the vision in all capacities.
Long live Pragmatics; long live the Pragmatics Association of Nigeria.
Thank you.
Akin Odebunmi,
National President, 2018-2024.