Opinions

Nigeria/Spain bilateral and study of Spanish

NIGERIA is a key member state for UNWTO and a founding member of the organization since 1975. And I would like to commend you, Mr. President, for your remarkable support as the first member state in signing the Instrument of Ratification of the UNWTO Framework Convention on Tourism Ethics 2020— Zurab Pololikashvili.

SHOULD knowledge of the Spanish be an essential requirement for the successful implementation of bilateral agreements between Nigeria and Spain? On June 1, 2022, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari met with the Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón to mark a singular occasion for both nations resulting in several bilateral agreements and Memoranda of Understanding. Buhari’s visit which included his speech before members of the Nigerian-Spanish Business Forum, and address at the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) headquartered in Madrid, showcased Nigeria’s centrality in Africa’s global economic and cultural contributions. Already, as a founding member of the UNWTO, Nigeria is poised to host the first Global Conference on Cultural Tourism and Creative Industry in Lagos, in November 2022. The recent Nigeria-Spain bilateral agreements and MOUs come on the heels of Spain’s “Africa Focus 2023” foreign policy recently unveiled by the Spanish prime minister promising to “build closer economic and institutional ties with various African countries.”

Nigeria and Spain have enjoyed many years of cooperation and strong diplomatic relations. Nevertheless, at the core of Nigeria-Spanish relations is the linguistic distance between English and Spanish that informs every facet of the interactions between the countries. The question then is how the divide between English and Spanish could impact the overall success and potential benefits of the most recent agreements and MOUs targeting important policy areas. How will the linguistic distance between Nigeria and Spain affect the associated administrative and transaction costs in communications? It is noteworthy that the study of Spanish as a foreign language in Nigeria lags significantly behind other languages including Chinese, French, and German. And yet, in terms of the sheer volume of Spanish speakers worldwide, Spanish is surpassed only by English and Chinese. The Nigerian-Spanish agreements offer a supreme opportunity to jump-start Spanish language education in Nigeria. And the benefits are innumerable. Here are a few. It means that Nigerians will learn a truly global language. It means that Nigerians will understand not only the expansive history of the Spanish Iberian Peninsula but that nation’s unparalleled explorations of a distant New World in 1492 and birth of a Spanish-speaking America. In Spanish America, Nigerians will rediscover the presence of millions of African descended peoples and understand their history, and cultural manifestations that continue to tie them to the African continent.

Furthermore, the study of Spanish in Nigeria will expand a knowledge base that underscores economic, educational, intercultural, and cross-cultural exchanges between Nigeria, Spain, and Spanish-speaking America. The Association for Spanish Language Advancement in Nigeria (SLANG Global) is a non-profit organization incorporated in 2019 and headquartered in Enugu, Nigeria. Several key objectives of SLANG Global include: to promote the learning and advancement of Spanish language in Nigeria, to promote the awareness of Spanish culture in Nigeria, to promote awareness and understanding of the Spanish-speaking African diaspora of the Caribbean and Latin America, to support and sustain Spanish language studies in Nigeria, to seek affiliations and partnerships with tertiary institutions in Nigeria to source prospective students of Spanish, to train students in tertiary institutions to become Spanish language teachers serving key regions in Nigeria and to establish intellectual connections between Nigeria and Latin America/the Caribbean; to highlight the presence and contributions of Afro-Latinos in Latin America and the Caribbean, to promote student and faculty exchanges and the transfer/exchange of expertise and to engage in community outreach that promotes women empowerment through intellectual craft-making. SLANG Global applauds the recent agreements between Nigeria and Spain as an important impetus to reinvigorate Spanish language study in Nigeria.

Vasser, Professor of Spanish and Director/CEO, SLANG Global, writes in via contact@slangglobal.org

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Uchenna P. Vasser