The Methodological Challenge of Oral Tradition in Classical Nigerian Comparative Studies: An Original Theoretical Contribution

Comparative studies bringing classical Greek and Roman material into dialogue with Nigerian cultural traditions face a fundamental methodological asymmetry: classical traditions are primarily textually documented while many Nigerian traditions are primarily oral. This asymmetry poses theoretical challenges for equivalence of evidence, reliability of comparison, and the avoidance of textual-literate bias that have not been systematically addressed in Classical Studies methodology. This study makes an original theoretical contribution to addressing the methodological challenge of oral tradition in Classical Nigerian comparative studies. A theoretical-constructive methodology drawing on oral tradition theory, classical source criticism, and comparative methodology was adopted. The study engages with Ong's theory of orality and literacy, Jan Vansina's methodology of oral tradition analysis, Albert Lord's oral-formulaic theory, and current classical scholarship on performance and oral composition in Greek and Roman culture. Fifty structured interviews with oral tradition practitioners, classical scholars, and comparative humanists across Nigeria and the United Kingdom provided empirical grounding for the theoretical investigation. The original Oral-Textual Equivalence Methodology (OTEM) proposed establishes four principles for methodologically rigorous comparison of oral and textual cultural traditions: functional equivalence (comparing traditions at the level of social function rather than formal content), performance-centred analysis (treating both oral and textual traditions as performance events), contextual embedding (interpreting each tradition within its own social and communicative context), and epistemic parity (rejecting assumptions of superior reliability in textual over oral evidence). OTEM constitutes an original methodological contribution to comparative classical-African studies.

Keywords: oral tradition, methodology, comparative classical studies, original contribution, oral-textual analysis