Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Farooq, Funmi and Yona

On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:

Yes English is a global language; for a Nigerian to state that it is the only language capable of binding the country together  and that no indigenous language is so capable is to admit of racial inferiority complex: if we were not colonized we would not have progressed!

Nigeria didn't evolve naturally. It emerged in its present form because English colonialists willed it into being. It could very well have emerged without colonialism, but it didn't. If it did, a dominant language might have emerged that would glue the people that would constitute the country. But that is in the realm of "what could have been," not "what is." I am concerned with "what is." Given the battles of supremacy between the dominant ethnic groups in Nigeria, it would be disastrous to impose one language as the national language in the country. 

East Africans have been able to adopt Swahili as their national language because it's basically a non-ethnic language. "Indigenous" Swahili speakers are not a "major" ethnic group in most East African countries in the sense in which Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa are in Nigeria, for instance.

There is no "racial inferiority" in admitting that one of the easiest ways to hasten Nigeria's disintegration right now is to impose any indigenous language on the population. Take English out and Nigeria is gone. No question about it. Wole Soyinka once suggested that we adopt Swahili as our national language because of the impossibility of adopting any Nigerian language to play that role. Of course, that's not practicable. So we are stuck with English as long as the structure we inherited from colonialism is intact.

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

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