Damiete Braide
Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC), in collaboration with Voice of Nigeria (VON) and Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC), last Friday, in Lagos, joined the rest of the world to commemorate International Mother Language Day with the theme, Safeguarding Linguistic Diversity.
Acting Director General, CBAAC, Mrs Osaro Osayande, in her address of welcome, said when we lose the diversity of our languages, we lose windows onto different worlds; we lose different ways of understanding the world; we lose different ways of understanding ourselves and different ways of (reflecting on) being human.
Going back memory lane, Osayande noted it was the second consecutive year the programme would hold in synergy with VON. What’s more, NFC, another key player in the advocacy for the promotion of African culture and heritage, joined the campaign this year.
The issue of promotion and preservation of African indigenous languages, she said, had a special place in the mandate of CBAAC, to which it had made some interventions.
“CBAAC has, in the past, not only held series of workshops on African indigenous languages, but it has published several books on indigenous languages, including the harmonisation and standardisation of orthographies on four cross border languages: Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Ijaw languages.
“These orthographies have been formally handed over to the Federal Ministry of Education to be used as instructional materials in primary and secondary schools. I am particularly elated that the theme for this year’s commemoration has been directed on ‘Safeguarding Linguistic Diversity’,” she said.
For her, this year’s theme underscored the uniqueness of each language. Besides, “It is also a recognition that language serves as the glue that binds together the community of its speakers, reflects their world view (of both the social and natural worlds), and in its words, stories, songs, and manner of ways of speaking, serves as the repository of the cultural, intellectual and artistic life of that community.”
Continuing, she said that perhaps was the reason Victor Ségalen opined that ‘when diversity shrinks, so does humanity.’ “In other words, the essence of diversity would be lost if, one day, the world wakes up to speak but one single language, eat the same type of food, dress in the same manner, and think the same way, it would then offer but one cultural model, and we would mourn the corresponding loss of diversity,” she said.
Speaking on the theme, various panelists offered divergent views. First to speak was Abdulrazaq Abdulsalam, who said language was an identity for people to know themselves better. Despite efforts to stifle local languages in the past when her contemporaries were compelled not to speak their mother tongue but English, they were able to learn and speak indigenous languages.
Lamenting the inability of many Nigerians today to speak their local languages, he said it was important we go back to our mother language. “In Asian countries, they discovered early enough the importance of their languages, which has helped them improve in every aspect of their lives,” he said.
Lending his voice, Olamilekan Ojo echoed that “language is our identify” and “it is our belief that if we speak our language, we can be recognised from where we come from.” He added whenever he travels out of the country, he speaks his mother tongue and always wears native attire, which makes people to look and admire his dressing.
Mrs Princess Okon, in her contribution, said it was called mother tongue because the mother usually instilled the language and knowledge onto the children. “In whatever language the mother brings the children up, that is the language that the children will speak,” she said, enjoining mothers to teach their children their local language and “wherever we are, we should uphold our language and culture.”
Last to speak was Olu Okekoya who opined, “If you teach your children your local language, they will be the best in school. We have to intensify our efforts to do more. It is so degrading that, when you visit your friend’s house who is from the same state with you and you find out that when you greet their children in Yoruba, they cannot respond to your greetings.” The event was spiced up with performances from Pefti Cultural Troupe.