Language as a communication tool is interdependent and interrelated; it carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through traditions and literature, the entire body of values by which a people is perceived. Language is therefore inseparable from us as a society with a specific form and character, a specific history, a specific relationship to the world. Most of the people believe that language is the basic tool used to give identity to a national life. Language in relation with mind, soul, identity and thought of those who speak in their mother tongue,
Early in the colonial age, it was established by the colonial masters through extensive researches that if you want to conquer a people in the interim, employ military warfare but if you want to conquer them perpetually, take away from them their language and cultures through sustained propagation which will be aimed at abusing their mindsets on the supremacy of their local way of life including and most importantly their language.
With such dangerous set goals of agents of colonialism, despite the cosmetic independence of African countries, African leaders, over the years, have shown lack of capacity to address the threat. This has accounted for the woes and the making of developing countries. The universal identity of every society is in its language, history, food, fashion, traditions, culture and its specialised knowledge. But the foundational communication gap that created the susceptible nature against our languages seems to have been bridged with the introduction of a variety of books in various subjects, all written in Fulfulde by Fulfulde Century Educational Books and supported and launched by Alh Muhammed Abubakar Bambado II, Sarkin Fulani of Lagos.
While I challenge educators like the talented and committed staff of the publishing firm or even the same firm to extend their research tentacles to other Nigerian languages, I believe the marketing and propagation of the publishing firm’s works and motive should be a collective responsibility of the society of Nigeria with suggestions of government and corporate sponsorship of the firm and other ones like that in the onerous task of protecting the major ingredient that defines us-language.
Akinola Iwinlade
iwiakinolaAgmail.com
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