The Vice Chancellor of Baze University, Abuja, Prof. Abiodun Adeniyi, has said technological advancement has made it increasingly difficult for migrants to disconnect from their roots.
Adeniyi stated this during a podcast, Conversations with Professor Jideofor Adibe, where he spoke on the theme, “How the Village Is Following You: Migration, Memory, and the Meditative Persistence of Belonging.”
According to him, the expression captures the enduring connection between individuals and their places of origin, particularly in an era where digital technology has transformed communication and human interaction.
The Vice Chancellor said the digital age had created a merger between absence and presence, as well as between the past and the present, making it possible for people to remain connected to their communities regardless of their physical location.
He said, “We are in the new age where there’s a merger of absence and presence, of yesterday and today, of before and now, on account of the revolution of communication that is around us.”
Adeniyi noted that technological advancement had significantly reduced the relevance of geographical distance, allowing people to maintain strong connections with individuals, places and communities across the world.
He explained that the increasing integration of places and spaces had made physical absence less significant, as individuals and groups could maintain their presence from virtually any part of the world through digital platforms.
According to him, the development had also made forgetting increasingly difficult, as memories of people, places and experiences could easily be preserved, retrieved and shared.
“Hardly would you find any entity, any individual, any group that is absent anymore. Presence can be registered from any part of the globe in terms of physicality,” he said.
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The don further observed that digital communication had strengthened human interaction, making remembrance more immediate and sustained.
He said the concept of the “village” in the context of his discussion was not limited to a physical community but represented memory, the past and the experiences people carry with them wherever they go.
“The village here is used in the sense of memory, being the things that we can remember, being the things that we forgot, and how we transport our past into our presence, irrespective of our location, irrespective of our distance.
“It will as well be within the translocal space within a national entity or the transnational space within the global entity,” Adeniyi explained.
“In the contemporary times, that distinction, that deep-seated traditional age of nostalgic feeling, is gradually becoming diminished on account of communication technology, which has brought about integration of places and spaces,” He said.
Watch Full Podcast Here: https://www.youtube.com/live/uH-KtePkzBY?si=vIDjcRvt-hCRCowx
