In this week editon of spotlight, meet Akintola Ayodeji, a student who grew up speaking Yoruba on a farm before he ever sat in a classroom. Now a medical student at the University of Ibadan, he is using that foundation to solve a problem he watches play out in hospital wards every day. He speaks with the IndyPress correspndent Gbayesola Samuel about the Learn Yoruba Initiative, why language is a medical issue, and what it takes to build something from scratch.

Before we get into the interview proper, can you introduce yourself?

I am Akintola Ayodeji. I am a 500 medical student at the University of Ibadan.

What inspired the Learn Yoruba Initiative?

Two things, really. I love to teach, and I love Yoruba especially. But beyond that personal motivation, I started seeing things in the ward that troubled me.

I remember a time when two of my group members were assigned to clerk a patient together. One was a Yoruba speaker, the other was not. The patient spoke only Yoruba, so the Yoruba speaking student handled the entire interaction while the other stood there unable to follow. By the end, the non Yoruba speaker was furious. He felt completely shut out. They actually fought over it, my own classmates.

Another time, a Senior Registrar had to leave his office and walk across the hospital just to find a student who could speak Yoruba, because he needed someone to help him communicate with a patient. These things kept accumulating. And eventually I asked myself, what can we do? I believe these are problems we can solve.

How did the initiative actually begin?

I grew up in a Yoruba environment. I literally worked on farms before I went to secondary school, so Yoruba was just part of life for me. When I got to university and encountered classmates who could not speak it at all, it struck me. In 300 level, I tried to organise informal classes for them. Free of charge. And you know what happens with free things — people do not take them seriously. The first class had a few people. The second class, fewer. By the third, nobody was coming. They knew they needed it. I knew they needed it. But it was not working.

So early this year, or late last year, I sat down and thought about it properly. The vision became clearer: structure it, build a curriculum, make it an actual initiative. That is how the Learn Yoruba Initiative started in January 2026.

What makes it different from a regular Yoruba class?

The focus. We are specifically targeting medical personnel, and that changes everything about how we teach. I understand the medical world because I am in it. I know what a student needs to be able to do in a ward, what a doctor needs to be able to say to a patient who does not speak English.

So in our sessions, we do not just teach vocabulary. We simulate real clinical encounters. I became a patient. My students clerk me, take my history, ask their questions, and when they make mistakes I correct them in real time, still in character. It grounds the learning in something practical and immediate.

Walk us through how the training is structured.

We begin with the basics of reading Yoruba. The alphabet, the tonal markers. Yoruba is a tonal language, so this foundation matters enormously. Until you can read it accurately, everything else is shaky.

From there we move into grammar, how words are used, how nouns and pronouns function. Yoruba pronouns in particular are not as straightforward as English pronouns, so we spend time there. Running alongside all of this are general knowledge sessions covering days of the week, parts of the body, numbers, time. Those go hand in hand with the structured curriculum rather than replacing it.

Where do you see the initiative in five years?

Right now we are in the University of Ibadan and a few universities around the Southwest, including Babcock and OAU. We have not gone very far yet. But looking at the reception we have had, and the fact that doctors are now among our students, I believe by the next five years we should have a meaningful presence in almost every university in the Southwest.

Some people warned me when we started. They said AI would make what I was doing irrelevant. And as capable as AI is, it has its limits. I think of it the same way mathematicians once thought about calculators. Teachers complained that calculators would make them obsolete. They are still here. The calculator is still here. Both found their place. I believe the same will happen with language learning and technology.

The classes are no longer free. Can you speak to that?

Yes, the classes are paid now. But I will say this: we are planning to introduce a free arm of the initiative, one that is not focused on medical personnel but on people from other parts of the country who have come to live in the Southwest and simply want to communicate, to buy things from a market trader, to hold a conversation with a neighbour. We are looking at a structured three week free class for people here at UI. The plan is to work through faculty presidents to reach them. That is still in development, but it is coming.

What is the biggest misconception people have about learning Yoruba?

That it is easy. Many Yoruba speaking people assume that because the language feels natural to them, it must be simple for everyone. But I have taught people who struggled with things I considered completely basic. Things I had to stop and rethink, not because they were not trying, but because what is effortless to you from birth is genuinely difficult to someone encountering it as an adult. The tones alone can take weeks to internalize.

So when a non Yoruba speaking medical student does not pick it up quickly, the answer is not that they are not trying. It is that Yoruba is a language with real complexity, and it deserves to be treated that way.

How do you balance running this initiative with medical school?

Honestly, that is the easiest part. I do not teach Yoruba all day. I have dedicated hours on specific days of the week for it, and everything else works around that. Medical school demands a lot, but it is manageable when you are clear about your time.

What is your advice to students who have initiatives sitting in their minds but have not started?

It is not easy to start. You need encouragement and you need people around you who believe in what you are doing. But more than anything, you need consistency. Keep pushing, and you will get there.

You can follow him on TikTok at @akintola where he explain medical conditions in yoruba.

Transcribed by Diran laolu