When I began learning French years ago, it wasn’t just the desire to learn a foreign language that drew my attention. My curiosity was drawn to the fact that the building housing Alliance Française, the center for learning French and other European languages, was actually owned by the state Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Enugu, Southeast Nigeria. It was now rented out to the French for the promotion of their own culture and language. Meanwhile, the local language, Igbo, was reportedly in decline.
My nostalgia was drawn to how the teaching of Nigerian indigenous languages was erased, while the materials, art, and history were stored away and left to rot, playing host to dust and cobwebs.
You can go to Alliance Française in Enugu and across Nigeria to see for yourself how our government is leasing arts, culture, and heritage centers to Europeans, Chinese, and Japanese while allowing our own language and history to die.
There are many young Nigerians who grow up in Nigeria and can’t speak Igbo, Hausa, or Yoruba. Such people, who speak English, end up learning one more of the European languages like German, French, Spanish, or join the growing community of Mandarin learners. Yet they care less about their mother tongue.
I already speak three European languages and am learning a fourth. While that could give me a global advantage in business and academia, there’s nothing to be proud of when you can’t speak your mother tongue.
In fact, it’s a thing of shame that no excuse can erase. To be ignorant of your own language is to be alienated from your history, thoughts, and culture. One who can’t speak their language is disconnected from themselves, and no reasonable person can take such a person seriously, including the White and Asian people we invest time, money, and resources in teaching their language to our children.
It’s an insult to Africa for President Macron to say that Africa is the heart of the French language. Yet reality says it’s true. Did you know that the population of people in African countries who speak French is more than native French speakers in Europe?
Macron’s statement re-echoes the legacies of colonialism and ongoing neocolonialism, cultural colonization, and economic slavery.
The paradox of a Black African who speaks with a White tongue calls for a new wave of decolonization and deconstruction.
I would like to see a new Africa where indigenous languages become official languages, like China, Japan, India, and South Korea. Where parents teach their children to be proud of their culture, history, language and origin.
I would love to see families that fill their kitchens and serve their tables with indigenous food like Eba, Tuwo, Yam, Akidi, Akpu, and Garri. Not cornflakes, noodles, and spaghetti.
I would like to see a new Africa reborn, a proud Africa full of confidence and self-motivation, not an Africa whose script is written in Berlin, filmed in Paris, and post-produced in London.
About the author:
Fr. Augustine Ikenna Anwuchie is a Nigerian Catholic missionary based in Maradi, Niger Republic
