On language and national development/integration (I)

If anyone is in doubt as to the critical place of language in our country’s national consciousness, national discourse and national reconstruction, the fact that we held a national confab during the ‘reign’ of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and the present clamour for a sovereign national conference in the middle of our fledgling democracy must persuade […]

If anyone is in doubt as to the critical place of language in our country’s national consciousness, national discourse and national reconstruction, the fact that we held a national confab during the ‘reign’ of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and the present clamour for a sovereign national conference in the middle of our fledgling democracy must persuade such persons that we are yet to conclude the character of the nation-hood of this country. We are yet to resolve the basis upon which our existence as a nation, our citizenship, beyond ethnic loyalties and ethnic nationalism which has made the growth of national patriotism an elusive business. We thus have to concern ourselves  with a number of fundamental questions among which are; what is the national question, what Wole Soyinka referred to as ‘ when is a nation?’; what is the language question, that is how do we decide which language or what language should our nation should our nation speak—a single language option or a multiple language one; in a multi-segmental , multi-ethnic , multi-lingual polity like Nigeria; and what is the role of the language question in resolving the national question?

One critical constituent of colonial and imperial subjugation is its dominance and control over the languages of the colonized peoples and the imposition of their own. Thus, language is an instrument of colonial hegemonic control. Paradoxically, one of the crucial factors in the survival of the colonies after the damages and ravages wrought by colonialism is the resilience and triumph of the indigenous languages, and by extension, the indigenous cultures. So, if we are talking of here about national integration through an evolution of a national culture, it is because our cultures, especially our languages, endure in spite of the fact that the imperial education system made valiant effort , not only to banish the indigenous cultures and languages, but to erect a ‘standard’ form of the metropolitan languages – be it French, English, or Portuguese, as the model. Language is the model, wrote Bill Ashcroft, a postcolonial scholar, ‘through which a hierarchical structure of power is perpetuated and the medium through which conceptions of truth, order and reality become established. However, because of the survival of the indigenous languages, the postcolonial voice has rejected, or is rejecting, the language, the power, the signifying authority of the dominant metropolitan culture.

We find that, in the end, the English language has been subjected to a variety of use in the postcolonial world like Nigeria, such that English variants (or just Englishes) have evolved to streamline the sense of difference or uniqueness of the English used in the postcolonial countries. Hence, the internationality (or universality) of the English language may, on the surface appear real. But in reality, the standard British English is confined, essentially, to the British Isles. Thus, the English of the United States is not the same as the English of Jamaica or Canada or Kenya, and indeed, of Nigeria. Before pursuing this further with relation to national integration, let me make a significant digression of pursuing the argument of the place of language in a Nigeria in search of technological development.

I once pursued the argument, in a similar Talk elsewhere, of the core essence of language to science and technology, which seems to be the new obsession of our Governments nowadays, to the detriment of the Humanities, without taking due cognizance of the centrality of language and literature to the advancement of civilizations, nation-building and the technological growth of any nation. I am afraid, unless we do a policy re-think in this direction, no serious reforms –seven points or no—can take off the ground in any effective way. All those world powers asking us to ignore our culture—at which centre is language and literature– are busy investing heavily in their cultures, almost in equal proportion to science and technology.

I submit that literature tells the story of any nation than any other forms of expression. Language is the poetics of literature—and of science. It society’s its narrative vehicle. Here I include theatre, especially home video, or the Nollywood phenomenon, which is yielding trillions nationally and internationally and radically boosting the image and profile of this country across the Globe.  Thus, it is through the communicative tools of literature and language, the thesaurus of conscience available to man—recording its mores, its joys, its sorrows, its ,orals, ethics, ethos and its accomplishment – that culture remains the socio-spiritual soul of a nation.

This is why we must keep reminding our policy makers and implementers of the invaluable essence of communication through literature and language in any political, economic and educational reforms project of construction and reconstruction that they embark upon, if such projects will endure.

Let me be specific here, however briefly, to state the fact that language is an important educational tool for transmitting science and technology. It is an accepted fact in educational circles in Africa and the so-called developing world that a crucial impediment to rapid socio-economic development, including knowledge and skill dissemination is the imposition of foreign languages as the medium of communication. The presence and dominance of foreign languages through which education is carried out in our countries has severely hampered the development of the numerous languages and dialects of Africa. Thus, our indigenous languages are under-developed in competence, vocabulary, structures and so on. When we compare this to what obtains in the ‘developed’ nations, where normal, daily routines, including research and development, are carried out I their own indigenous languages—it is absurd that foreign languages continue to subtend as a language of official transaction in Nigeria. All the innovations and technological break-through of Russia, Japan, China, USA and so on, are codified and encoded in their our national languages.

Education is the corner-stone of nation-building. Technology is invention through thought. Thinking is done and articulated through language. Therefore, thought, language and technology are inextricably linked. It is through language that we conceive and impart information and express feelings—even scientific and technological information.

Certainly, language, as used in day-to-day communication, in the media and in government documents, has a major role in development. The transfer and transmission of science and technology is one of the ways of ascertaining the realization of the human potential. In the transfer process, we often ignore the fact that science and technology are cultural phenomena. They are the superstructure of this culture. But language is the base. This is precisely why the transfer of science and technology in Nigeria often achieves peripheral results. Bamgbose (1994) aptly submitted that “unless there is technology culture, the seed of transferred technology will fall on barren ground and it will not germinate”. It should be possible to teach science and mathematics in a child’s first language in order for him/her to imbibe the culture of technology in his/her own language. Some preliminary, tokenistic steps have been taken in our National Policy on Education (1977), which states that the medium of expression in the primary schools should be in the mother tongue. The step taken in the development of a glossary of terminologies in science and mathematics in nine Nigerian languages was feasible and germane. We must explode the myth that our indigenous languages are not competent and appropriate for scientific and technological purposes. What we need to do, as a matter of conscious national educational policy, is to establish Indigenous Languages Technology Centres where indigenous language laboratories, through which the findings and outcomes of our technological and scientific research, can be codified into indigenous language concepts, will be created. Terminologies, modes of expression and vocabularies (in lexical and structural terms) can be in the indigenous languages, chosen from among the nine major languages in the context in which the inventions and findings have been carried out. Soft-wares of these inventions in these indigenous languages will also be developed.