Scholars from different parts of the world converged on Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, and asked the government at all levels to restore history as a standalone course in the nation’s academic curriculum.

Also, the scholars asked education authorities to restore history to a secure place in the curriculum and urged departments to use visual sources, oral history, supervised digital tools and community projects to make teaching more engaging.

Besides, the scholars charged historians to speak beyond universities. They advised historians to identify schools, museums, broadcasting and responsible online platforms as places where scholarship could strengthen public understanding and contest misinformation.

The scholars have converged at the three-day international conference to chart a way forward for history in a society full of false narratives and AI-generated historical claims against primary sources.

“The scholars who spoke on the theme ‘Futures of History’ warned that artificial intelligence risks flooding scholarship with false citations and decontextualized facts.

The scholars said that while AI can speed up searches, transcription and data organisation, it can also fabricate references, reproduce bias, and detach information from the circumstances that give it meaning.

Consequently, they demanded stronger scholarly practice, saying every AI-generated quotation, date, citation and factual assertion should be tested against identifiable primary material or reputable scholarship.

The conference encouraged universities and professional bodies to produce guidance on ethical use, attribution, privacy and academic integrity.

In his keynote address, titled “History in Africa and Africa in History: Interrogating the Future of a Discipline’s Relationship with a Continent,” Professor Abiodun Alao of the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London, invited renewed confidence in the discipline and a rigorous engagement with Africa’s experience.

Similarly, Professor Tunde Decker of Osun State University followed with “Stories, Algorithms and Quantum Physics: The Praxis in Between,” where he examined storytelling as a framework through which people order experience, transmit memory and form identities.

Panelists at the conference explored themes stretching from digital media, orality and Afrofuturism to gender, colonial archives, security, Pan-Africanism, higher education and environmental futures.

The communiqué read by Stephen Adewale, the Co-Secretary of the OAU International Conference, called for research and teaching that gave greater attention to women, workers, young people and minority communities. It also sought more sustained work on environmental history and indigenous ecological knowledge.

Adewale, who spoke on behalf of the participants, said new technologies will change the route by which people encounter the past, but the credibility of history will continue to depend on evidence that can be traced, arguments that can be tested and scholars willing to account for silences as carefully as written records.

The communiqué gave equal weight to sources that remain beyond digital reach, saying oral testimony, family papers, indigenous languages, newspapers, objects, performances and cultural landscapes were identified as living repositories of African experience.

The participants called for urgent investment in conservation and digitisation, guided by responsible access and respect for the communities from which records emerge.

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