Ethnic Minorities, Justice and Languages

By

Ikechi Udegbunam Chukwunonye

I picked up a yellow-covered book recently which happened to contain the rules of the Nigerian civil service and flipped through it  casually, promising myself to  read the book with greater commitment in the future. To my astonishment under the language examination section, only three local languages stood clearly apart for usage, but it  stipulated separately, that any other local language can be used, provided there is a ‘reasonable reason to do so.’ A wind of thoughts possessed me. Why aren’t the Igbo,Yoruba and Hausa languages subjected to such stricture? Why the qualification? What is so special about these three languages? In a country of many languages - this is a travesty and one that must be rectified quickly if sanity, justice, development must prevail. I think it is time that all Nigerians plunge their hands into helping drag Nigeria out of the doldrums.

These corrections are imperative in securing a united and coherent Nigeria . Anything short, is to my mind, a marriage of delusion and deception. Prevarication and adamant hold of the status quo portends disaster for the country. Some  minorities whose languages are treated with utmost contemptment  hold the country with  oil , from which an almost mono-centered Nigeria thrives and achieves international recognition in a world swarmed by its battered image of 419 and established corruption. It smacks of ingratitude and wickedness to sponge their oil, despoil their natural habitat and accord their language such low status. Nigeria can be great only if certain frameworks are put in place to ensure a habitable, peaceful environment where all are given a fair share and opportunity ; nobody is subject to apartheid. Nigeria must move in this regard to secure and guild them through the path of evenly paved roads.

Perhaps, no other  section in Nigeria suffers from such inhumane disregard than oil producing enviroments.They not only contend with poor national ,state and local governments but treacherous evisceration of their water and land; desecration of their natural trades.The stark,ungrateful,barbarous escavation of their mineral resources is compounded by the lethal injection of  language apathy.Our national languages must be stretched to include all languages.Dialects within languages must also be allowed to assume written and  spoken dimensions. Every language must be accorded a sense of health; allowed equal access and importance in the running of government,presented to world in equal measure as well as  other protocols the use of languages espouses in modern life.

Every language is important and none should be thrown away. Being a speaker of two non-Nigerian languages, including English – to varying degrees -  I appreciate the beauty ,benevolence ,fraternity language brings. I have shocked many by suddenly speaking their languages. Questions, excitement, merriment swirl around.How,when,where did you learn the languages, they ask All of a sudden you are grafted into a large world of new companions. Once in a workplace, people who couldn’t speak English but spoke French came for a service. A senior manager demanded if anyone knew how to speak French.Nobody in sight could,and the only one who seemed to be around from the minute French-speaking pack was far away.I tendered myself and engaged them in the French language amidst the euphoria, to the relief of our guests and my workplace’s delight.

It wasn’t my job to attend to them as my workplace had a clearly delineated division of labour but they reaped from their diversity. A subjective CV(curriculum vitae) would emphasize not just the obvious contents of your abilities – education attainments – but other thin-lined competences. The languages you speak however numerically slight could turn into a pot of gold. I have always wondered why certain details should be put on CVs but I have come to find out that organizations have wide reaches and tap into different innate capacities of the individual. The special hobbies you do that turns others off may be useful in other contexts – keeping a wine collection,old artifacts and obsession with nature may prove to be unwinding in the future. So therefore, a country must harness every strength within, to surge a might expression.

Every language has to be given human life; the speakers must be made to feel a sense of relevance .The Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka , have language as one of their grievances against the majority Sinhalese whose language reaps the bounties of national relevance in the Island . The Tamil Tigers are the first in recent  history to embark on suicide bombing. Their first suicide attack involved a lorry bombing at an army camp in 1987, which killed 40 people and in the years that followed at least 200 Tamil Tigers blew themselves up. The conflict between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan government is Asia's longest and bloodiest separatist war, claiming more than 60,000 lives since the LTTE launched its bid for Tamil independence in 1972—the war has seen off successive Sri Lankan governments. Thousands have died since the eighties. Their language is a cut of wonderful design and artistry. This injustice incenses them heavily. Sidelining people can have a very devastating effect as the Sri Lanka case appears to show.

Every language has depth. Languages not only serve as linguistical vehicles, they hold histories in sacred vaults accessible in titillating increments. Some languages never advanced to written stages but compensated with  deep stores of oral histories, sayings, handed down for centuries. Reading about the history of certain people might lead to a wall but  introspective interviews unearths stories, myths, mysticism, folklores cached within and referenced in linguistical abstracts. Sadly,the Nigerian constitution only gives imminence to the Igbo,Hausa and Yoruba languages. These languages, according to the 1999 constitution, shall form the basic indigenous communication used in running the national assembly.

The European union comprises of 23 member states and 27 languages. On joining the EU, each national government decides what language or languages to adopt. The citizens of each country decide. No language is foisted on any country. The 50 year-old body has an official who overseas multilingualism in the person of Commissioner Leonard Orban. Nigerian is long overdue for compromise that would breathe life into the teeming polygot ethnicities strewn across 356,667 sq miles.

In Nigeria , there are more than 50 languages that are spoken by less than hundred people; Sambe for example  is spoken by six people in a Kaduna village (source: Research on minority languages in Nigeria by Roger Blench, 2001).

Dr. Uwe Seibert, of the Department of Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts at the
University of Jos writes : ‘Talking about the languages of Nigeria one may say that, unless they are documented and developed, they may be gradually given up in favor of more prestigious languages, and with time they may be forgotten completely.’

By ‘prestigious’ languages he may mean more acceptable languages to the populace.

He laments the inactivity of many languages and predicts a bleak future:

‘Many languages are no longer actively spoken by the younger members of the language community. They may still be able to understand the language, but they prefer to speak English, Hausa or some other language of wider communication among themselves and to their children. The consequence is that these languages will become extinct in the next generation. In fact there are some Nigerian languages that are nearly extinct (e.g. Holma, a Chadic language spoken in Adamawa State ) or have already ceased to exist (e.g. Auyokawa and Teshenanci, two Chadic languages formerly spoken in Jigawa State ).’

The Nigerian language policy is just one of the many threads of imbalances plaguing our country. There has to be an immediate reversal of these trends to create a system of fairness across the board. I have heard people say that it is impossible to embrace every language spoken in Nigeria , so therefore we must stick to a selected few. Perhaps, they would appreciate the need for proactivity if their languages were mashed and threaded with abject ridicule...relegated to irrelevancy .There are more than six extinct languages in Nigeria ; a tireless, masculine overdrive should occupy our immediate existence not just to incorporate every  language in Nigeria but other issues that would impact positively on minorities to reflect and engender a just Nigeria .

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Robot  Villager

# 1 Ethnic Minorities, Justice a...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 24.01.2007 14:51

Ednut  Villager

# 2 In Nigeria , there are more than 50 languages that are spoken by less than hundred people; There are over 50 political parties in Nigeria and that is simple not needed. Two or three strong parties are all Nigeria need in other to fully develop its political system and strengthen its nascent democracy. In the same vain, Nigeria does not need all the 250 + languages spoken in that little country. We should let some languages die off naturally and develop the more important national languages that are enshrined in our constitution. This your article does read like a class project. Posted by Ednut| 24.01.2007 18:32