How imminent extinction is making its owners return to the drawing board
By CHIKA ABANOBI (
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A concerned diviner, who was said to be troubled about the he-goat's diminutive height in the comity of goats, was said to have asked him to come for divination for a height-gain, but he responded that he would rather go for a divination for long life because he who is alive will one day gain the height. So goes an Igbo adage.
In the days of F.C. Ogbalu, Founder of the Society for Promotion of Igbo Language and Culture (SPILC), the Igbo used to go for divination on height gain and at the end of the day, their language was able to gain some lexical height with the introduction of some new Igbo vocabularies like Mahadum (university), Okammuta (Professor), Tekinuzu (Technology), ekwenti (phone/mobile phone), nari (hundred), puku (thousand), nde (million) and ijeri (billion).
But following the prediction by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Advisory Committee on Language Pluralism and Multi-language Education that Igbo language, and by implication, culture, may be headed for extinction, "subsumed by other stronger Nigerian languages," by 2025 if nothing is done by its speakers to ensure that it is not only taught in schools, colleges and universities, but also used as language of official communications within government and business circles in the five Igbo-speaking states - Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo - the prayers, this time around, seemed to have changed from that of height gain to long life. Prof. Innocent Eleazu, a United States-based economist and a native of Obibiezena in Owerri North Local Government Area, Imo State, told Education Review that he was troubled not only by the UNESCO report but by also findings by other world-eminent scholars which seem to confirm UNESCO's.
To that end, he founded Asusuigbo Teta (Wake Up Igbo Language) Association International "for preservation of Igbo Language and Culture," a body based in Massachusetts, United States but with its Nigerian office at 14/16 Mere Street, Owerri and having Chief B.C. Ihedinma as its Secretary. Founded in 2009, it held its first annual conference in July, 2009, at Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education (AIFCE), Owerri and again in 2010 after which it decided to rotate it among the five Igbo-speaking states that make up the South-East zone. It would have been the turn of Abia in 2011, but the conference was shelved, Eleazu said, because of "security concerns." But between July 18 and July 20 this year, the rescheduled conference eventually held in Umuahia, the capital of Abia State. However, it was a disaster, an anticlimax as many prominent Igbo sons and daughters, government officials and traditional rulers who, ordinarily, ought to have graced the occasion were nowhere to be found.
That prompted Education Review to start asking some questions. Mrs. Charity Ihekire, who represented and presented a paper on the occasion, on behalf of Dr. (Mrs.) Monica Philips, the Commissioner for Education, Abia State, attributes the non-attendance of the conference by prominent Igbo sons and daughters to poor planning and publicity. "You know when a man based in United States is coming down to Nigeria to organize a conference of this nature, it will not get to the grassroots," she said. Prof. Eleazu disagreed when he told Education Review that he tried to reach out to everybody that mattered in Igboland and Abia State, including Governor, Theodore Orji and members of his State Executive Council, but cannot tell why they failed to turn up. "I wrote letters to them; I still have my copies with me," he insisted.
But according to Mrs. Ihekire, the government tried its best. "It was through the government that the organisers were able to reach the teachers that attended this programme," she noted. All the same, "the best" was not good enough as there were no arrangements made to provide refreshments, not even the common cellophane-packaged water, for the participants who were drawn mainly from schools and ministries within the state capital.
The result was that many of them were forced to endure hunger in a programme that started in the morning each day and lasted till the better part of the evening. Many left in anger. Worse still, the conference took place without the public address system, forcing the participants to strain their ears to hear what was being said and others to complain seriously of "not hearing anything at all." The organizers, it turned out, were not financially buoyant enough to provide a public address system.
Even the venue of the conference, Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Nnamdi Azikiwe Secretariat Complex, Umuahia, later became a subject of contention on the second day as participants were locked out for about two hours for "non-regularization of necessary papers of permission" by the organizers. They were later allowed in, after issues had been sorted out by Prof. Eleazu and his team. But even with that, matters were hardly led to rest as unfounded rumour began to make the rounds about Prof. Eleazu collecting huge sums of money running into millions for the conference, from the five Igbo state governors, namely Theodore Orji (Abia), Peter Obi (Anambra), Martins Elechi (Ebonyi), Sullivan Chime (Enugu) and Rochas Okorocha (Imo) and pocketing everything and refusing to share it with others or putting it to the use it was meant for - namely getting a befitting venue and providing refreshments for the conference participants Initially, Eleazu did not get to hear about the rumour until this reporter brought it to his attention during an interview session in which he wanted to know the truth. Eleazu's eyes almost fell out of their sockets, from shock. "This is shocking," he said. "Now, I want to say this categorically that since I started championing this cause, no government, state or federal, has given me or my organisation a dime
I met with the Chief of Staff to the President, officially, last year, a very good man, very concerned about the Igbo language. He wanted to get the five governors to back me up, but for some reasons I wouldn't know they have not done so. Maybe they will still do so, but as at the moment, I am funding this project with my personal money and with the money given to me by friends like the Eze of Igboukwu. He had been very supportive." Asked whether he has met the governors one-on-one, apart from somebody speaking or appealing to them on his behalf, he said: "I have written a letter several times to all of them, but so far, there had been no response. I am saying this realizing the fact that I am on tape.
There is nothing you can do without money. We have to have a secretariat from where we can reach people. We don't have a befitting secretariat yet. In fact, our plan is to have offices in all the five Igbo-speaking states but we don't have for now because of lack of funds." Paucity of fund did not, however, stop speakers at the conference from speaking their minds. "The UNESCO formular places the responsibility of protecting endangered language in the hands of native speakers", Prof. Eleazu noted in his welcome address.
"Therefore, ATAI Third Annual Conference will not take the conventional format of paper presentation. It will be a brainstorm of native speakers of Igbo language." Indeed, it was a time of brainstorming as speaker after speaker, speaking in Igbo language tried to paint a picture of where the rain started beating the Igbos and how they can save themselves from its continuous pounding. Prof. Francoise Ugochukwu, of Open University, UK, in her paper titled: "Igbo Language at the crossroads: ebe ka anyi na-eje? (where do we turn to?)" recommended, among other things, "the publication of standard monolingual Igbo dictionary," "support from the mass media - radio, television, newspapers" and "encouragement of dialectical development" as some of the ways by which Igbos can extricate themselves out of the problem. Dr. Chuks Osuji, former MAMSER director in Imo State, called on Igbo sons and daughters to cherish and speak their language "because it is our identity." Uzoma Okpo, a popular radio presenter and Director of Radio Services, Broadcasting Corporation of Abia (BCA), urged Igbos to love and speak their dialects and government of the Igbo speaking states to conduct their businesses in Igbo as their Northern counterparts are doing in Hausa. He also called on pastors and preachers in rural Igbo areas to use Igbo in their ministration, noting, tongue-in-cheek, that "there is no indication yet that Jesus does not understand prayer or sermon delivered in Igbo."
"I believe that this conference is another good opportunity for all of us stakeholders to come together to proffer solutions to the numerous challenges facing our Mother Tongue because a tribe without a culture has no identity," Dr. Mrs. Monica Philips, noted in a speech read on her behalf at the conference. Mrs. Ihekire, who represented her at the conference later pleaded with Education Review that "all hands should be on deck so that we can retrace our steps because there is no road in the direction we are heading to. Our children must be told where they belong because we have our culture and our language. Let our children know about it, that's what we are saying."
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