A lot is happening in the Africa polity today that the African governments are
not mindful of. Not because they do not want to, but because many actors in the
political circle do not understand the need for holistic approach to the African
quest for development. This ignorance is what has sustained the aberration that
has made nonsense of the indigenous African languages in the affairs of
Africans.
Today in Africa, our indigenous languages, both the politically classified major
as well as the minor, are barred from being spoken or taught as subjects in the
kindergarten, nursery, primary and secondary/high schools. In fact, the most
annoying of the madness, masquerading as sanity, is that many parents endorse
the uncritical actions, and inactions, of these schools. I hope none is
attempting to make a case for the public schools? I sincerely hope not! How many
indigenous languages teachers are there in the pubic schools today? Many have
been 'fired', by self-styled culture freak political gladiators, like Chief Bisi
Akande, the former Governor of Osun State of Nigeria, who sacked many indigenous
languages teachers on the flimsy excuse that "they are required to surplus", or
is it for daring to go to the University to study what everyone is speaking in
the locality?. For those that are still in the service, it is either they are
teaching other subjects to command relevance or merely whipping dead horses, the
students, who have been infested with what Prof. Kola Owolabi referred to as
Negative Language Prejudice Syndrome (NALPS) or Negative Language Prejudice
Virus, the attitude that have help in seeing no good in speaking indigenous
languages.
The private schools are the worst of all. You can never find any trace of
indigenous languages either as an offered subject or as an acceptable means of
communication in the syllabi and premises of most of them.
Not only are our indigenous languages disappearing from classrooms, they are
also disappearing from our homes. I recently visited a friend, who claimed to be
highly educated but when I spoke with his children in our hometown language,
Ijebu, they were just looking at me as if I were speaking Latin, or at most
Greek. To further confirm what I suspected, I decided not to code-mix my Yoruba
with them. I then conversed with them in average Yoruba (that is below that
which is spoken in Oyo-Ile), without adding any word in English. This effort
turns out to be a disaster. Really, my friend is an educated man indeed, I
concluded!
I pray no one gets me wrong. I am not saying learning and speaking the European
languages is bad; rather, the crux of my argument is that valuing the European
languages over and above our indigenous languages can not, and will not, make us
a better person. If there is any benefit of it, it will be that it will further
compound our already endemic cultural crisis. J.A. Sofola's African Culture and
the African Personality, an expose on what makes an African person African will
be a good reading in this regard for those that care to read, I mean read
anything about African culture at all.
Today, half of the global languages being threatened by extinction, according to
the UNESCO list, are indigenous African, and mostly developing world, languages.
Whichever one speaks, be it Hausa, Swahili, Igbo, Ewe, Akan, Ijebu, Zo, or Kuteb,
that essentially gives an identity that can never be wished-away. Apart from
identity, our languages can also be a vehicle in our development effort. A very
good instance on the vital role of language is its use in promoting
techno-scientific knowledge. The Japanese have done this before with their Dutch
scientists. The possibility of this kind of effort at this 'perilous' time of
our search for technological advancement has been underscored by the research
conducted by former Nigeria Minister of Education, Prof. Babatunde Fafunwa and a
host of others with their University of Ife language research of 1974. Other
researches that have confirmed this are Mc Namara Reaserch 1965, University of
Bradford Research 1978, Swahili Teaching Research 1981 and the South African
Threshold Project of 1994. These researches among others have been conducted to
underscore the role of indigenous languages in removing pedagogical barriers in
learning.
If our leaders are not myopic and are culturally grounded, they would have
understood that ideas which are constructed in specific languages are vital in
development policy formulations. And, that, without proper mastery of local
cultures to ensure well-intentioned diffusion, we are bound to continue
wallowing in our dependent, and crass under-developing, enclave. All the
artificial structures being advocated and built by the likes of Mamman Gaddafi
of Libya, e.g. African Union, NEPAD, "United States of Africa", etc can never
take us to any great, not talking of greater, height of development that we
crave for. Not because these ideas are not workable but because there is
essential need for cultural renewal that will make interaction and grounding of
current developmental efforts possible.
We could start with the revival of our languages, not to compete with the
"unifying" western languages like English, French, etc but to ensure that we are
not made 'languageless', nay persons with dead cultures, in the coming decades.
Languages are carriers of other elements of culture, let's save it; if not for
the sake of the other elements like songs, philosophies, folklores, dance, etc
that it carries but for the sake of development and of the generations of
Africans "that are still raining in heaven" (to borrow an idiom from Yoruba
culture), the future generations. Though much rest with our government but as
the Yoruba sayings goes, Ajeji owo kan, ko gbeeru dori, meaning our government
cannot do it alone; it begins with me and you. Let's save our dying indigenous
language by using them!
Yemi Ademowo Johnson, socio-political philosopher, bioethicist, is of the
Applied Anthropology Programme, University of Ibadan, Ibadan © 2008
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