FOR Nigeria and indeed, Africa to surmount its developmental challenges, the use of indigenous languages, especially in literary and communicative engagements should be strongly encouraged. This was the opinion of language experts at the formal launch and presentation of reports on the Harmonization and Standardization of Nigerian and Related Languages (Benin, Cameroun and Niger Republic) held last Wednesday in Abuja.The programme, which was organised by the Nigerias Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC) in collaboration with Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), South Africa, attracted the presence of linguists and language promoters from across the continent.The event was the outcome of series of workshops held in the country and some other African countries in 2010. The aim was to further underscore the centrality of native languages to the development of the people and the country at large.Having successfully executed similar projects in Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, the director, Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), Prof. Kwesi K. Prah, who highlighted the strategic position of Nigeria and its languages in the continent, thought it imperative to partner CBAAC in ensuring that Nigeria also enjoys benefits of standard and harmonized local parlances.Even President Goodluck Jonathan, who was represented at the event by the Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Alhaji Abubakar Sadiq Mohammed, shared in the belief that language drives development across the globe as well as plays vital role in sustaining democratic ethos.Commending CBAAC and its partners for a job well done, Mr. President expressed particular interest in the words standardization and harmonization, which according to him, were instrumental to the successful conduct of the just held general elections in the country.As the conduct, result and general assessment of the 2011 elections have shown, we have been able, with the support of all Nigerians, to harmonize the various components of our electoral system and we have achieved a standard, which is adjudged to be of international acceptance.Performing the official unveiling of the report, the President pledged the support of the federal government in formulating policies and programmes aimed at preserving and propagating the nations cultural values.In his capacity as the Minister, Sadiq Mohammed reiterated that development in Africa would depend largely on premium placed on indigenous languages and culture. He urged Africans to see the use of native languages as essential component of empowerment for the people.The Minister was optimistic that if Asian continent, which accounts for the worlds largest concentration of people and a Babel of languages was able to maintain its culture and linguistic identities and have used them as springboard for socio-economic growth and development, Africa can equally build on its multiculturalism and multilingualism.In his opening remarks, the Director-General, CBAAC, Prof. Tunde Babawale, said the decision to partner CASAS to standardize and harmonise four language clusters in Nigeria was influenced by the desire to use African language as catalyst for cultural renaissance, unity and development.He added that growing interest in colonial languages at the expense of African languages in homes and schools further motivated both bodies to invest in the project.These problems are further compounded by lack of uniformity in language curricula. We remain badly affected by divisions that we inherited from colonialism. There have no agreements on standards for orthographies and other issues affecting many languages that have linguistic similarities across our common borders in Africa. These reasons spur CBAAC to look for an institution like CASAS to partner with in an effort to address the problem.Although, milestone has been achieved in the project, it was not without its peculiar challenges. According to Babawale, the choice of languages to standardize was one of them as all languages were considered important. With limited resources therefore, criteria for selection depended on population of users of languages within the country and across border. Even among the selected languages, arriving at unanimously acceptable orthographies became another challenge as no group would relinquish its own for another. However, at the end of the exercise, clusters of Igbo, Ijaw, Hausa and Yoruba languages were harmonised to allow for writing and teaching in schools.His words: Like in any multi-lingual, multi-national states, there are always problems of everybody guiding what he or she has. We discovered that in each of the clusters, there are groups that jealously guide their own orthographies and feel that that was the standard. So, we needed to organise meetings with all those schools so as to ensure that we have unanimity of opinion and viewpoints to be able to arrive at what we have published in those monographs today. We wanted to ensure that everybody takes something and drop something before we could come up with one that is acceptable to scholars.To ensure the project achieve desired purpose, Babawale saw the need for Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government of Nigeria. This was to allow the relevant agencies such as the Ministry of Education adopt the report and incorporate it into school curriculum so that both teachers and students would have harmonised orthographies to work with.I think it is important we have an MoU in order to formalise the work we are doing and to bring in better governmental presence especially through the Ministry of Education. That is the agency that will make this impact directly on the people because we want it to influence school curriculum so that teachers and students can have the harmonised orthographies to use as the text in those schools.With a successful completion of the first phase, the CBAAC boss said attention would be shifted to minority languages. The Centre has also planned series of workshops and training programmes for teachers and writers to enable them adopt the already presented standardized orthographies.With this on hand, government across the continent would be able to communicate effectively to the people in the language cluster they all understand. Dont forget that the ultimate objective is to ensure that governments across the continent are able to communicate to the people in the languages they understand and instead of producing documents in English, they can produce in indigenous languages if we have a harmonized documents that make it possible for all the various speakers of the language to relate to. So, in talking about health, education, in promoting its policies on HIV/AIDS, government can now communicate directly to the people in the languages they understand because documents written in English have limited audiences.For Prah, the feat achieved in Nigeria within one year was influenced by enthusiasm of members of the team majority of who were from the nations tertiary institutions.We made a good start, it has just taking us a year to come this far and it is this far because of the enthusiasm and hard work of the members of the network.The academics, who came together to do this work are from Nigerian tertiary institutions, Republic of Benin and Niger.Aside the need to sign MoU, Prah also expects government of each African country to take issues affecting the usage of African languages more seriously. According to him, there is no chance of development for the continent without its native languages. He frowned that Africans do not realise the relevance of such tool to national development.His words: People dont realise that without the use of our languages - language of the majority of the people, we cannot develop. Our people do not understand English, French and Portuguese, only minority of us actually use these European colonial languages while the overwhelming majority know best their own languages. If we can empower these languages with science and technological and take it back to them, then, we have the chance of development. The moment we start doing like the Asians, Indonesians and Malaysians, we would start making progress also.He also highlighted some of the challenges the team encountered, which include getting enough members to attend meetings, where language variance was discussed. However, they were able to surmount these through hard work and dedication to service.
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