By Longtong Ibrahim
The Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Leadership Newspaper, Sam Nda-Isaiah, has stressed the need for the adoption of Pidgin English otherwise known as broken English as one of Nigeria’s indigenous language, saying, the country has over 30 Million native speakers and approximately 100 million in West Africa.
Nda-Isaiah made this known on Monday while speaking as a keynote speaker during the 2017 annual round table on Cultural orientation organized by the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO) in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture in Kaduna – northwest Nigeria. The theme for the event was; “Indigenous Language Newspapers and National Development”.
According to him, members of each of the nearly 400 ethnic groups in Nigeria can converse in Pidgin English, even though each group has its own slight addition and modification.
He said, “we must take advantage of this God-given language, codify it and deploy it immediately as a medium for the unification of our people. Language is the strongest unifying force among disparate peoples.
“Just like the whites successfully did with Afrikaans in South Africa, we too could codify our own pidgin English. There is already a Pidgin English Bible designed to reach approximately 100 million Pidgin English speakers in West Africa. We much now begin to have Pidgin English newspapers.”
While lamenting the state of indigenous language newspaper, having had very low shelf due to publisher’s interest of political advancement, he however stressed that Indigenous language newspapers, like any other newspaper must be run as a business if they must be sustained.
“Vernacular newspapers do not do well because of limited circulation and the lack of advertisements to sustain them. There are still no daily vernacular newspapers. But the sway of these publications should not be underestimated. They are the most consequential publication among the masses of our people. And that makes them very key to any strategy at national development as well as dangerous tool in the hands of troublemakers,” he noted.
