This was one of Professor Babatunde Fagbayibo’s arguments as he presented his published paper titled Choral intervention: reimagining international law pedagogy in Africa through music at the Department of Jurisprudence’s second research seminar for 2023.

The 27th of March seminar proposed the establishment of a connection between music and international law. The paper advanced the idea of rethinking legal education to include unconventional ways of teaching and learning international law. He further argued for “academics to consider music as an epistemic tool for approaching the discipline from a critical perspective”.

The presentation highlighted the propensity of scholarly engagement within international law to prioritise so-called “hard” issues such as global security, global warming, poverty, reforms of international institutions, global governance architecture, etc. He emphasised the missed opportunity to use expressive and aesthetic manifestations of music to better the understanding of and find plausible solutions to ‘tough’ issues.

He made a similar argument in an opinion piece published  in The Conversation Africa in 2018 about how Fela’s music can decolonise international law in African universities. In this piece, it is said that the musician’s intense and methodical performance "provides an important window for students to gain a critical understanding of the global system”.

The presentation was well received, encouraging rigorous engagement among the audience who asked hard-hitting questions and made valuable contributions through comments that Professor Fagbayibo committed to consider as he embarks on writing a book based on the paper presented at this seminar. This research seminar was another platform for reviving the intellectual atmosphere of the Department and the Faculty of Law at large.