On August 19, Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, told the state’s Art and Culture Stakeholders Forum that the state had banned the use of English at public traditional functions. Henceforth, Yoruba and the Ekiti dialect would be the means of communication at those fora. He spoke through Deji Ajayi, Ekiti State Head of Service.
Since that announcement, not a few have excoriated the governor, claiming his latest diktat was nothing but a gubernatorial chase of shadows. In their view, Ekiti has more pressing problems than a government dabbling into what language to use or not use at public events — perhaps.
Still, it would appear those who hold this view are the ones chasing shadows – without knowing it. Language is the window on life. Without its mastery, life itself becomes a lifetime chase of shadows, with all of the angst and trauma that entails. Should you be in doubt, ask why post-colonial Africa has become a laggard in world affairs; compared to some parts of Asia, especially China and Japan. Why does much of Asia cope better with the present Euro-American rigged global order?
The casual answer would appear language. The colonial masters truncated the native tongue, in the process of imposing their own. So, much of Africa got marooned in a cultural no man’s land: departing own language zone; but never fully arriving the destination of the new foreign tongue. If language is only the entry point into a people’s cultural universe, then truncated language would arrest much more than the tongue – the hub; the essence of the affected peoples – and negate the formation of concepts, which everyone must grapple with, to make headway in life.
Apart from this basic deficiency, there is also the pernicious politics of language, which deliberately glories everything in the language of the so-called “master race;” but puts down everything in the “servant tongue”. At the peak of apartheid in South Africa, the White minority regime tried to impose Afrikaans as language of instruction in Black schools. The opposition to that attempt led to the Soweto uprising of June 16, 1976. After everything, 700 school children lay dead, victims of police bullets. Still, it was heroism well earned. Had that attempt not been resisted, that racial regime would have culturally swallowed the black populace. It would have been a total culture rout, with devastating consequences. That is the challenge of burying a language.
Even Nigeria (which escaped the South African experience despite English colonisation), also tasted the pernicious politics of language. Suddenly, Yoruba and other native tongues became “vernacular” to the “posh” English, with all the inferiority complex that entailed. Elsewhere, persons of mixed races became “mulattos,” with all that word’s racial slur. The psycho-social baggage, of these assaults, takes a terrible toll on the carriers; and could well limit their confidence, self-esteem and progress, as a collective, all through life.
Back into the Graeco-Roman fundaments of Western civilisation, the Greek started the voyage into myth, theatre, philosophy, mathematics and physical sciences, the basis for the cutting edge of technology in contemporary times, with a thorough mastery of their tongue.
Back then, English was not even the language of court – it wasn’t rigorous enough! Literature historians would say such inferior feelings forced Englishman John Milton, to write Paradise Lost, and his other epic poetry, to challenge earlier classical masters, in Greek and Latin, and prove English too was robust enough to express complex thoughts. Again, that underscores the imperative of fully mastering your native tongue. That China and Japan have somewhat avoided a freeze in their language evolution, over the ages, has accounted for their ability to develop concepts and conceits, thrive in the sciences, and forge own native technology, so vital to competing in the modern world.
So, by deciding on this new policy – speaking strictly Yoruba and the Ekiti dialect at traditional events – the Fayemi government is aiming at some renaissance, a form of cultural rebirth, which could eventually end in a cascade of flowers, in total development, in various parts of Ekiti life – art, culture, scholarship, science and technology; thus berthing better general wellness among the people.
Read Also: Gov. Fayemi bans use of English Language during traditional events
In neighbouring Osun State, under the Rauf Aregbesola governorship, the state started a policy in which adherents of the three major faiths – Christianity, Islam and African traditional practices – say prayers at government events. Just as it was then in Osun, it is now in Ekiti: those who seldom understand the concepts – and even lack the temper to try to do so – are the first to hurry and condemn it. That is a pity; for it is condemning policy from the point of willful, if not outright, combative ignorance. Everyone loses by that.
Still, the present Ekiti policy is a good point to start an aggressive crusade and public enlightenment, on how vital language is to the survival and general wellness of a people. Beyond that, it needs to go back to the educational fundamentals: the school curriculum. Perhaps it needs to push a revolutionary policy, making Yoruba the language of teaching in the first three years of primary education.
That would not be novel. It used to be the practice in public primary schools of yore, before the malady to willy-nilly speak English crept in. Besides, the late Prof. Babatunde Fafunwa once experimented in the mother tongue, as sole language of teaching, at the University of Ife. The result was mostly rewarding – again, testifying to the core place of language in every human endeavour. Some of the fluent personages in northern Nigeria, like former Governor of Nasarawa State, Tanko Al Makura, grew up in schools where Hausa was the language of teaching for the first three years.
What is more? Ekiti State could make compulsory, the teaching of every child, in Ekiti schools, the Ekiti dialect. That way, every child enters the school system, imbued with pride in his or her mother tongue. Though those who don’t understand its intrinsic benefits would howl and kick, that policy cannot be bad for Ekiti children – or anyone for that matter.
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