Wande Abimbola

By his own account he was apprenticed in Ifá chanting before school at twelve. His Ifá corpus study (1976) followed the outsider William Bascom's Ifa Divination (1969).

Wándé Abímbọ́lá, official biography (wandeabimbola.com); Abimbola, Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus (OUP Nigeria, 1976); William R. Bascom, Ifa Divination (Indiana UP, 1969)

Nigerian scholar of Yorùbá literature and Ifá (born 1932), installed in 1981 as Ifá's world spokesperson.

Sources3 sources

Scholarship

'Wande Abimbola, Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus, 1976Record of his 1976 study of the Ifá corpus (Oxford University Press Nigeria).
William R. Bascom, Ifa Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa, 1969The earlier outsider's corpus of Ifá verses, published 1969 by Indiana University Press.

The tradition itself

Wándé Abímbọ́lá, About Professor Wándé Abímbọ́lá (official biography), 2019His own account of Ifá apprenticeship and of his 1981 installation as Awise Awo ni Agbaye by the Ooni of Ife on a conclave of babaláwo's recommendation.
apprentice in Ifá chanting and ritual long before he began formal schooling at the age of twelve