Storytelling: Obasanjo admonishes youths on good moral

Olayinka Olukoya – Abeokuta

Former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has urged parents and community leaders to revive the culture of story telling, as part of effort to inculcate good moral standards in their wards.

He said this on Tuesday during a programme tagged “Story Time With Obasanjo”, organised by the Centre for Human Security, an arm of the Olusegun Obasanjo Library (OOPL), as part of activities marking his 80th birthday, at his ancestral home, Ibogun-Olaogun.

Obasanjo recalled that many good lessons of life were learnt through fables and folktales which according to him are gradually going into extinction.

The former president who sat among pupils of Baptist Day School, Ibogun, where he had his primary education, Beryl Crysolite School, Ota and a school from Osun State, told them different folk stories.

Obasanjo informed the pupils about how  his parents and other community leaders used to gather young children,  under the moonlight to tell them folktales and fables.

He said, ” I was born in this village 80 years ago. Our parents used to tell us stories in which we learnt from. Riddle is a means of sharpening your wit, after that it becomes stories.

“Many of the folktales revolved around  animals, particularly tortoise. They tell us these folklores to make us a better person in life, by pointing out what to do away with or what to do.

“They normally require us to solve the riddles so as to make us think deeply and sharpen our wits while they told  us stories to inculcate moral values into us.

“We have grown up with those moral values and they served as foundations upon which we built our lives and conducted ourselves wherever we went.”

He said that he had therefore written 12 story  books and still going to write more  so as to sustain the culture of story telling.

“These stories are called fables and folktales. These stories are normally told in the evening. It removes boredom and enhanced participation,” he added.

Copies of the books were later distributed to the participating schools.