Of Lionheart, Oscars Disqualification, and National Identity Crisis

(By Daniel Chukwuemeka) – The disqualification of Genevieve Nnaji's Lion Heart from Oscar's Best International Film Award category is a very controversial topic. It'll certainly attract the usual discourse about colonialism and debate around nationalism and identity. In all, however, I think that Americans are indirectly telling us, "go home, Nigerians, and resolve your identity crisis. Go home and think, and act."

English is our official language, but if you watched Lion Heart, did you see the part where Pete Edochie is fuming before his prospective Hausa in-law? The Hausa man mutters some words in Hausa without knowing that Pete Edochie understands the language. Pete joins him in Hausa and speaks it away at the amazement and excitement of the Hausa man. That alone seals both their business and family connections.

             I said it in a post yesterday. We had work to do, but failed to do it. Noah Webster jnr. woke up one morning and said that God came to him in a dream and ordered him to write a dictionary of American English.
This was happening at a time when America was considering whether to adopt Spanish or German as their national and first language. He convinced them that the revelation to produce an American English was divine and that America therefore should adopt the English, but one in which "colour" becomes "color," "colonise" becomes "colonize," and so on, an inflection necessary just for a sustained assertion of their freedom from the English crown even in their continued use of english language. That led to the eventual birth of Merriam-Webster's dictionary. 

In what way have Nigerians asserted their difference and total conceptual freedom from the British even while using English? And if we must endure and manage a Nigeria that was given to us and run its press, government, education, media and market places in English, what effort have we made to fortify our unity by learning the languages of other ethnic groups? Ibibio does not have economic value, you say. But if I was taught Ibibio in primary school and I speak it today, won't such affiliation strengthen my relationship and sense of understanding of my belonginness in a common union with every Ibibio man out there? And vice versa for the Ibibio who speaks Igbo. And if that happens, won't Ibibio be relevant, at least to Nigerians, in the next 50 years? How does a language become economically viable if it is not spoken by its owners and their neighbours at market places, schools, and government offices?

The decision by the Oscar's might be seen as biased. But the fact that Nigeria was colonised by the British does not mean that English effectively binds all Nigerians. Every Nigerian is first either an Igbo or Ibibio or Hausa or Yoruba, and so on. Official language is not the same as first language. English is not Nigeria's first language. Nigeria does not have first language in the same way the Spanish or Portuguese have a first language.

We should all go home and resolve our identity crisis. Nsogbu anyị erika. Ọ ka nkụ.