The Problem of Language and What Is the Authentic Nigerian/African Literature?

by Paul Chuks

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture, said Frantz Fanon. A fact of language that has eluded us for many years. Perhaps this is why Obi Wali started the campaign for African writers to write in their native language. When writers replied that the most common language in the country was the colonial one, Obi Wali urged the military to overhaul the English language and make Hausa the Lingua Franca. Even the military ignored him and the argument was fated for purgatory.

Ngugi Wa Thiongo continued from where Obi Wali stopped, claiming that the colonial masters harangued their colonial subjects into adopting their language, while subjecting the colonized language to non-value. And so, it was only right for writers to put their language in writing. While Wole Soyinka earlier reminded Obi that he too wrote his criticism in English and should lead the charge by writing in his native language, Achebe reminded Ngugi of some instances when Africans(Angolans and Nigerians) themselves marched on the street because the colonialists opted for teaching them in their native language. He then said English was a tool “African writers were going to do unheard of things with.” For Achebe, English wasn’t foisted on Nigerians and so Ngugi’s claim was incorrect, and African writers needn’t jettison it.

Ngugi’s concern was not invalid due to the nature of language — it lives in the silhouette of the culture it emanates from. It’s the single most effective tool of colonialism. Admittedly, we are in the Western Civilization. Many things would be traced back to it even after decolonizing. For example, the paradox of language. It is so daunting that we cannot almost progress without contradiction. Adopting our native language in writing is likely a colonial practice. Before invasion, the Igbos, Efik, Ibibio wrote in Nsibidi, the Yorubas wrote in Ajami, the Fulanis, Latin Adlam, Cameroon, Bamum Script, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Vai script, Akan people of Ghana, Adinkra. Today we all write in the colonialist’s language. In 1854, Lepsius, a German philologist, developed an international standard of the alphabet for all world languages. In 1856, Ajayi Crowther and Simon Jonas studied the Igbo language and in the next year produced the first igbo book that consisted of the ten commandments, the lord’s prayers and the first chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, using Lepsius standardized alphabets. What is now known as igbo writing today, as well as other native writings of other colonized nations, is a colonial improvisation. If my ancestors — or any other from aforementioned ethnicities, who existed before the invasion — were to write poetry today, it would be with the Nsibidi script — or whatever their writing system was, which didn’t have any European orthography. Not in any form of Lepsius’ writing system. The fifteenth century invasion hampered the growth of Africa and subjected it to a kind of misgrowth that collapsed its identity on a whirl of perennial questions. It also defeats the aim of decolonizing literature. The people for whom these books are written won’t be able to read them as they lack the literary armory for it. As at 1960, according to Howard French, there were only 9,000 secondary school graduates in Sahelian Africa. Only two universities in Nigeria, and six in 1970, none of which owned any language department. A generation had existed without being able to read and write their language, partly because most of the literature they were privy to was done orally and the writing system they knew had faced demolition. A number of them, though, were taught reading and writing in their native language with Lepsius’ orthography, they didn’t just outnumber the many who couldn’t. And today, language courses are the least studied courses in Nigerian universities. The implication of this is that more people read and write in English than in their native language. Asking writers to write in their native language as a decolonial effort only scores an altruistics goal but defeats the aim. It is not financially enterprising.

What is authentic Nigerian/African literature? I say literature that is done by a Nigerian residing anywhere in the world. Reason is: literature is not done from borders instead the heart. A Nigerian living in the United States whose parents migrated in the 60s, and has never visited Nigeria, does Nigerian literature, even though the writing lingo is different from what comes out of Nigeria. As a colonial contraption, migration is a part of the Nigerian story because it is the byproduct of colonialism. The Nigerian identity has not yet been agreed upon due to the imperialist baggage it carries. Some say after all, Nigeria was thrust upon people of differing lifestyles by authorities who meant no good, and consider it wasteful to form an identity. Others try to develop what they perceive to be Nigerian identity with the political definition of having sung the same national anthem, saluted the same flag and flaunted the same passport for years. They end up boxing it and relegating diaspora literature to a state of literary void. For the sake of putting a name to a face on the world stage, a political definition with these virtues might suffice for what a country is. But the question of national identity, especially for the colonized, goes beyond these virtues. It will always be improvised and not absolute like the uncolonized. What differentiates the Senegalese from the French is one is colonized, the other is the colonizer. One is able to state his identity very absolutely, deploying history and culture. The other is conflicted on whether his Frenchness, viciously thrusted on him, which he reluctantly wears, is his true identity; or what his ancestors were before the invasion; or a synthesis of both. If he goes with the former, the colonialists have won. If he goes with the latter, he charges at the impossible because they are both different people from a psychological and historical standpoint. If he goes with the synthesis, he is safe and that way, he’s different from the Frenchman who lives in Paris. The safest way to define authentic African/Nigerian literature is simply literature done by a Nigerian/African anywhere in the world. This doesn’t blur Nigerian/African literature in a minefield of other literatures. It is very recognizable because literature mirrors society and our society is not identical with the West. Society here is a metaphor for the varying identities attached to a geographical location. When an African travels Westward, their Africanness follows them as they wouldn’t be treated otherwise. Whatever experience they have is one reserved for the African. It is from there they write.

I am reminiscent of this poem https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/154658/fuck-your-lecture-on-craft-my-people-are-dying

by Noor Hindi in which the opening gambit is a differential of the colonizer and the colonized. The colonizer has the privilege of writing about mundane things — flowers, moon. The colonized writes about death as caused by the colonizers. Then the speaker, a Palestinian American, confesses that the imperialistic nature of America has rubbed off on her because “when she enters a room, something dies.” The poem makes evident the mind-frame of an immigrant who resides in the imperial core. It is a metaphor for the duality of her identity. She is Palestinian enough for the suffering of her people to affect her and American enough to be far away and able to document it. Her Immigrant status affords her a pathway out of suffering. But the Palestine reality is still permanently tied to her. This is the reality of all colonized peoples. I then imagine a Palestinian literary critic accusing Palestinian poets of copying the west because they write confessional poems and publish in western publications. It shatters logic.

Here’s an input from a Western editor that captures the difference between African poetry and the West:

“Publishing voices from across the globe, it has been my experience that there rises a distinct and delightful character from the submissions of African writers. Works which continue to echo native oral tradition, weaving literature in equal measures inherently robust, reflective and very much in passionate pursuit of truth, justice and liberty. Boasting themes which oft encapsulate the existential, investigate identity and wrestle against corruption, racism, faith and oppression. Comparatively western literature reflects its own first world cultural experience, more often than not this appears to breed the freedom to write what I consider privileged poetry and prose, broader, less urgent, less frequently indicative of the dependence upon the written word for survival of the very spirit.”