Role Of Indigenous Language In Nigeria’s Literary Dev

The year 1914 marked the founding of a potentially great country. A hundred years after, the adverb ‘potentially’ which modifies the adjective ‘great’ has refused to delete itself because of the long years of both poor leadership and bad followership. In spite of her occasional gestures of distinction combined with her size, population, affable climate, soil fertility and all kinds of resources within, including trained hands and brilliant minds, Nigeria has not been able to convert her endowments into lasting monuments of grandeur.
Instead, we continue to be feckless and unpatriotic, leaving ourselves each time at the mercy of clay-footed potentates who think ethnically; who turn an endowed nation into a bastion of poverty, where corruption is king; and nepotism its fraternal twin. Yet this is a nation of writers, the home of laureates at varying levels, including one Nobel Prize in the kitty. A nation of ‘pen-pushers’ is a nation where the intellect prevails; it should be a nation of creativity, enlightenment and varying attainments.
Before 1914, there had flourished literature in the various languages spoken in what is now Nigeria. In the North, Arabic literary scholarship was the vogue. Much poetry blossomed, whether in Arabic or Ajami (the Hausa version of the Arabic language), which is perhaps why poetry in the modern tongue of English has recently emanated from the North.
Before we proceed further, it is pertinent to cite Oseni’s inaugural address in which he remarks that “over eighty per cent of the literary works in Arabic by Nigerian writers are in verse, and many of them have been studied in detail in Nigeria, Egypt, Greece, Britain, United States, Germany, etc.” This is not to say that the North did not have its own indigenous literature different from the Arabic or Ajami varieties. These literature existed side by side, Arabic/Ajami, being the exclusive pursuit of the local educated elite, who were scant and limited in number.
According to E.N. Obiechina (1990), “… proficiency in the use of Arabic writing has remained at all times the prerogative of a small section of the population, the scribes and the learned men; it was never diffused among the entire population. The production of literature in the Arabic script as well as its use of communication purposes has remained largely the preserve of a tiny intelligentsia of religious and administrative dignitaries.”
This was perhaps, those I.Y. Yahaya (1988) referred to as malamai (scholars, teachers) “who developed a unique system of learning, mainly in two phases: the first phase is the search for the mastery of Koran… and the second phase is the search for specialisation in such branches of knowledge as jurisprudence, theology, syntax, logic, law prosody and the sciences of astrology and mathematics.”
In the South, before 1914, traditional literature held sway. Described in many ways as oral literature, orature, folk literature, oral tradition etc, indigenous literature is a survivalist art. By which is meant that this literature has always in Africa since immemorial times and surprisingly not waning; its impact is still felt, even as this piece is being written up. Oral transmission of the Nigerian experience is still popular in spite of the many decades of the introduction of literacy. Notwithstanding the mutual habitation of the ancient and the modern in recent folktale formulation, a sharing of abode popularised by Amos Tutuola in his ‘tall, devilish story’ – to use the haunting words of Dylan Thomas – new folklore is still being produced. Apart from the proverb, the formulation of folktales and fables, riddles, epigrams, myths and legends is a continuous loric activity.
There is no doubt that folktale telling, riddle games etc. are on the decline, their use in modern Nigerian literature is a cherished recipe for an eventful aesthetic experience. It is difficult to say when this cooperation between folklore and the modern literary art in Nigeria will end as this collaboration seems to serve the two well. This artistic collusion is not only noticeable in written literature, it is easily observed in proverbs, riddles, anecdotes and new songs, particularly when such songs relate to the various activities in the modern arena.
A writer, whose deployment of folklore is so obvious is Amos Tutuola. A few critics had tried to depict him and his foray into folklore as no more different from what a stamp collector does with old postal stamps. Some of them deny him merit and originality and give the impression that he has simply brought folktales known to many people together and put them into semi-literate English.
Some West Africans were even unhappy with Tutuola’s publishers, who they accuse of having shown that this was all the English the newly emancipated Africans would be writing. However, more recent local critics have shown more understanding. While they do not think that a work like The Palm-wine Drinkard (1952) will be Africa’s best use of English, they consider Tutuola’s censurers as hasty and self-restrictive.
As it is today, to write a piece of African literature without the injection of African traditional materials is like preparing a soup without thinking of salt. African oral materials found even in snippets confer authenticity on the modern African literary heritage. Thus Achebe, Soyinka, Okigbo, Okara, Aluko, Clark, Ike, Amadi, etc. are today remembered among other reasons for what they have made of orature, which they inherited from their different cultures.
The inculcation of traditional literature did not stop with the older artists, recent writers are even more aggressively adept at appropriating folk materials. Osofisan, Okri, Osundare, Fatoba, Sowande, Ofeimun, Enekwe, Nwabueze, Ezenwa-Ohaeto have in various proportions incorporated folk elements in their writings such that their rootedness is not in doubt.
Literature in indigenous languages is a literary afflatus that is hardly given attention. Yet this is the mainstay of our claims to having a buoyant literary tradition. At best, educated members of the different Nigerian ethnic groups knew indigenous writers of their expression, and at worst those even within the ethnic territory who have readily encountered these writers in their works are few and far between. Often, writings in English were encouraged while those in the local languages were not given the same impetus. However, the curriculum change of the 1980s has made it imperative for secondary school students to offer at least one Nigerian language in their School Certificate examinations, thus compelling them to be more familiar with their indigenous literature and language. This is commendable but it could be better.