The following item from the Lagos paper, This Day, was seen on AllAfrica.com at http://allafrica.com/stories/200612260075.html . This would be an interesting article to discuss on this list.... DZO
Nigeria: The Future of Nigerian Literature Vanguard (Lagos) http://www.vanguardngr.com/ COLUMN December 24, 2006 Posted to the web December 26, 2006 Tony Afejuku AS I gave further thought to the subject of Nigerian literature, I thought I found myself in some quandary: how profitable would be the distinction I was going to point out between these two related but different subjects of "Nigerian Llterature" and "The Nigerian language?" Do we have the indigenous Nigerian language, a lingua franca spoken and written in Nigeria? Of course not. What exist are different, disparate languages, different mother-tongues spoken in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Nigeria. What I am saying here is not new, but herein lay a huge dilemma stalking me, tiger-like, when I was searching for my title. But I must lessen my burden - and very quickly too - with pedantic precision and a literary dictator's passion and sensibility. Without further ado, I decided against my two-subjects-in-one because we do not have "The Nigerian language" but "Nigerian literature" done in our lingua franca of English in, I dare repeat it, a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Nigeria. We have Nigerian literature, albeit we engage in this literature in our language of exile - which English is, English, our colonial and post-colonial language, which we shall immerse in for a long time yet. The title I have chosen is "The future of Nigerian literature." In deciding for this title, let me quickly anticipate any trenchant critic by saying that I have Nigerian written literature in mind, not the vast majority of multi-ethnic Oral Literatures from our geographical Nigeria. Perhaps without realizing it, I am sounding unpatriotic and unnationalistic; but how many Nigerian writers, scholars, critics, intellectuals, linguists, philologists, educationists and bookpeople can speak and write in their respective indigenous languages with the same fluency and correctness as they do in the colonial and post-colonial language of our conquerors? This question of course has bearing on the literature, the written literature we have been producing since English was forced upon us. Right from the time, English people arrived our shores with their Bible and stick to lure and whip us into toeing their ways of life, we have been expressing our thoughts, unwritten or written, in their language; and by this weighty singular act, the literature we have been producing is, strictly speaking, English literature by Nigerians! It is, to put it in another way, Nigerian English Literature. But let me not yet jump into any conclusion of this essay. As Chinua Achebe says, while paraphrasing an Igbo proverb, "Do not under-rate a day while an hour of light remains". I must be careful, we must be careful in passing judgment while there still remains even less than an ample time to make a pertinent observation on any issue. Ethnic languages Now the postulation I am tendering is that the future of Nigerian literature depends on our writers' continued use of English rather than on their use of their ethnic languages to write. Again, to quote Achebe: "A language spoken by Africans on African soil, a language in which Africans write, justifies itself". The predominant language spoken in Nigeria today, the language in which Nigerians write today is English. This language justifies itself. And through its self-justification, it reaches its very wide and diversified audience within and outside our shores. The future of Nigerian literature depends on this. In an interview he granted Sunday Vanguard on November 5, 2006, Anezi Okoro, an Nsukka dermatologist and professor of medicine who is also a literary writer and translator itching and aspiring to make a mark in the world of literature by translating Shakespeare's plays into Igbo, remarked as follows: "I know it is important to preserve our culture, to preserve our language and life. We should write and speak in our language. Many languages have died over the years and many more are still going to die and anyone who thinks that his own language or our languages are threatened to the point of extinction must feel moved to preserve those languages. The evolution of a language is such a unique phenomenon and it brings along with its instruments of culture and traditional heritage which becomes an exclusive preserve of those who speak the language. For those of us who are writers, it is important that we get involved by expressing ourselves in our indigenous languages." Relevant Links West Africa Nigeria Arts, Culture and Entertainment Books After reading the above extract and other aspects of Anezi Okoro's interview, I could not resist calling him an enthusiastic and romantic Igbocentric. The word "romantic" applied here does not mean that I see him and his position as absurd. I use it here to mean that the man's idea - even though it is not really new - its pleasing to the imagination. I may be viewing the man subjectively, but the effect which his interview arouses in me is what I am trying to convey. There is the need to qualify this remark by drawing an impressionable onlooker's attention to Okoro's daring and ambitious task of translating Shakespeare's plays into Igbo. As a dermatologist, he definitely would have done some grafting of Shakespeare's artistic skin in order to accommodate his own personal idiosyncracies as a translator who used foreign alphabets to realise Igbo literature in English and English literature in Igbo. Now, Okoro calls his translation Akuko Ufodu Shakespeare Koro. Are the alphabets contained in this title Igbo alphabets? Those of us who wish to write in our various indigenous languages must invent our own alphabets if we really want to promote our ethnic languages and literatures. Simply put, we must truly indigenise our literatures and languages by designing our own alphabets and orthography. But again, I need to re-ask: are our ethnic literatures Nigerian literature? I re-raise this question as a Nigeriocentric - a terminology I must coin without qualms. In any discussion of Nigerian literature, the well known phobia of Ngugi wa Thiongo of Kenya for African mother-tongue literature is something we should be squeamish about. Ngugi's phobia at best was a failed experiment. At any rate, the failure of any African writer to write in his mother-tongue will not cause the death of his language. Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, and J.P. Clark-Bekederemo are very talented and outstanding literary aristocrats and icons of Nigeria. In fact, when they began their writing career, they did so as Nigerian writers, and not as ethnic Igbo or ethnic Yoruba or ethnic Ijaw writers. Naturally, they drew material from their immediate environments and outside them in the endeavour to write universally and for humanity. Their audience extended beyond their local and national homesteads. Okigbo, in particular, borrowed magnificently from diverse sources and from various cultures of the world. Copyright © 2006 Vanguard, Kirikiri Canal, P.M.B 1007, Apapa, Lagos, Nigeria 234 1 587 2662/264 5241 [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] **************************** Disclaimer ****************************** Copyright: In accordance with Title 17, United States Code Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. 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