Nigeria's Comic Language and National Identity

(Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu)--A well respected and accomplished Nigerian comedian recently chided his

colleagues for being local champions who are hardly marketable outside the shores of Nigeria and Anglophone West Africa. Global fame has eluded his counterparts, he regretted, as a result of the 90% reliance on Pidgin English as the language of comical communication.

The comedian clarified his understanding of ‘global’ as being the western world, specifically the United States and English speaking Europe. South African comedians, he charged his Nigerian colleagues, have been able to penetrate the high walls of America and Europe’s s stand-up comedy business due to their ability to render jokes in the sort of English embraced by these nations. For his colleagues to make progress, he admonished, they must leave behind the local pidgin language and reach towards its more ‘refined’ counterpart.

In trying to understand the implications of the comedian’s - no doubt – well intentioned advice for the Nigerian comedy industry, the question of a sense of self-pride, self-assurance, self-acceptance and collective sense of national identity of Nigerians as a people comes to the fore. Along that line, one realizes that the comedian’s admonition can be located within the age old conviction of Africans that to make progress, they must shun their authenticity in favor of Westernization, often labeled modernization.