GO BACK TO YOUR LANGUAGE

A famous Kenya writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o brought issues like this in his book Re-membering Africa. He sees language as "a communication system and carrier of culture by virtue of being simultaneously the means and carrier of memory". If language has that much importance as to carrier memory of our past, then one would ask why most Africans have decided to let go of that past and embrace the imposed language of colonial power. Through this language we have encountered European modernity no doubt but can we really say that we have evolved? Most of us have neglected and toiled with our language, our memory bank and eventually this would lead to starvation and death, what Ngugi calls Linguifam and Linguicide respectively. The conquerors saw an invisible right to impose a language on the conquered; a right that most conquered nations have chosen to accept instead of fight against.


Therefore, as long as we cannot think and act in the language we have known for centuries, our nation would not move forward. Nigerians and to a greater part Africans have to see the validity of their indigenous language as a stepping stone to moving to a greater height. Most of the best growing economies in the world do not evolve in another language but in a language they know. Take for instance China, most technology produced in that country is done in the Chinese language and not English. They have been doing fine that way. So in every home, the habit of indigenous language should be imbibed. This would ensure that our nation does not just die of the surface of the earth. We should see the multiplicity of language available to us as a medium to get ideas from different parts of the country in different perspectives rather than a dividing line between people. We would learn to accept one another and work together to make our country better not in the English Language but in our various indigenous language because our nation is one that has ‘unity in diversity’.

Written by Ikeh, Nkem Catherine