SENATOR EWHERIDO AND HIS LOVE FOR URHOBO LANGUAGE

More than ever, Nigerian indigenous languages face a clear and present danger of extinction. For a lot of us from minority ethnic groups, we thought the problem was that of minority indigenous languages only, but a UNESCO report which listed the Igbo language among indigenous languages facing the threat of extinction within the next 50 years, has brought to fore the enormity of the problem at hand.

Urhobo, the fifth largest ethnic group in Nigeria, faces an even bigger problem. By the 70s and the 80s while growing up, speaking of Urhobo in homes in Warri had started disappearing, but Urhobo was still the main language of communication in towns like Ughelli, Agbarho and other towns and villages in Urhoboland. But the trend is changing fast. Pidgin English has taken over in Ughelli and is taking over as the main means of communication in other Urhobo towns and villages. But that is not even the danger; the real danger is attitudinal. If you speak Pidgin English fluently with all the latest slangs, manufactured with alarming rapidity, then you are the happening thing. If your fluency ends only with Urhobo without Pidgin English, you don’t belong.

The other danger is that in recent times, I have not seen any Urhobo family in Lagos or Warri, where the medium of communication is Urhobo and that includes families where husband and wife are Urhobos. At best, both parents communicate in Urhobo while they speak English when talking to their children. Today, only one out of every 10 Urhobos under 40 years (who grew up in cities) I come across in Lagos, Warri or other cities speak Urhobo fluently. The others either do not understand Urhobo or understand but do not speak or speak very little of the language. This is worrisome. The situation is better in the villages, but we do have a big problem on our hands.

It is in this light that the Senator Akpor Pius Ewherido Urhobo Language Competition comes as a huge relief. Senator Ewherido started this competition last year with an encouraging 984 entries. Surprisingly, 162 and 42 of those entries came from Lagos and Port Harcourt, respectively.A breakdown of the entries from all the eight Urhobo local government areas is as follow: Okpe, 61 candidates; Ughelli North, 105 candidates and Ethiope West 55 candidates. Others are Udu, 138 candidates; Ethiope East 167 candidates; Ughelli South, 143 candidates; Sapele, 77 candidates and Uvwie, 34 candidates. Preliminary rounds were held in five designated centres: the three federal constituencies in Delta Central and Lagos and Port-Harcourt Zones. Nineteen finalists emerged from the preliminaries. The 2012 edition was eventually won by Miss Eguono Sagbodje from Agbarha-Otor in Ughelli North Local Government Area. She smiled home with a brand new Kia Cerato and a Scholarship award to cap it up. All the 19 finalists in the 2012 competition were also awarded scholarship by the Senator and they have since received their cheques for the 2012/2013 academic session.

The 2013 Edition of the Senator Akpor Pius Ewherido’s Urhobo language Competition has been scheduled to commence with collection of participation forms this month. The 2013 edition will be in three categories: Students category for those within the age bracket of 6 to 18 years, youth’s category for those aged between 18 and 40 years and senior category for those, 40 years and above.

The categorisation is to improve on last year’s competition, where some people who were over 40 years were disqualified, while much younger people were in a disadvantageous position competing against young adults. Ewherido therefore decided that nobody should be discriminated against on account of age in this year’s competition. One gladdening thing about this year’s competition is that it has caught on like wild fire and tends to give the impression that those of us worried about the demise of Urhobo language are alarmists, going by the large number of people who are collecting forms. The enthusiasm is soothing. The forms for this year’s competition are available in all Ewherido’s constituency offices and designated collection points in Lagos and Port Harcourt.

As part of his efforts to promote the Urhobo language, Senator Ewherido also recently awarded scholarship to three students studying Linguistics/Urhobo at the Department of Languages and Linguistics, Delta State University (DELSU), Abraka. At the presentation, the Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Eric Arubayi described Senator Ewherido as a worthy son and a true representative of the Urhobo nation. These scholarships are part of the special scholarship scheme Ewherido instituted for students studying the Urhobo language in tertiary institutions, such as Delta State University and the College of Education, Warri to deepen the study of Urhobo language.

Laudable as the Senator’s gestures are, they are not enough to save Urhobo language from extinction. We must as a people do a lot more to save our beloved Urhobo language from an avoidable death. One, I am not suggesting that we stop speaking of pidgin English, but we must cure ourselves of this pidgin English pervasiveness and “oppression” and speak more of Urhobo.

Secondly, we must as a deliberate policy, communicate in Urhobo with our children. When we do that, we must insist they talk to us too in Urhobo. There are too many Urhobo young sons and daughters who understand but cannot speak Urhobo. You cannot preserve a language that way. There are a lot of languages that have gone into extinction that way. If people can only understand but cannot speak a language, then the death of the language is already knocking on the door. Our children will always learn English in School but nobody will teach them Urhobo except us.

Thirdly, we need attitudinal change. I remember how one young lady referred to me as “ogburhobo” (bush boy) in my university days and my only crime was that I spoke Urhobo fluently. That must change. Speaking of Urhobo must become a thing of pride and any Urhobo person unable to speak the language must be made to realise that something massive is missing from his life.

Fourth, today a lot of the young Urhobo chiefs cannot speak Urhobo. How can a custodian of a tradition be ignorant of the tradition he is supposed to take care of? I submit here that as a policy, no Urhobo son or daughter, who cannot speak Urhobo, should be given a chieftaincy title henceforth. People must understand what they are getting. Some of these chiefs cannot even pronounce their titles correctly. Our traditional rulers need to be sensitised in this regard. Titles should be given to those who know the value, not the rich and the mighty.

Five, we should lobby state government to make the study of Urhobo compulsory in primary and secondary schools in Delta Central. But I want us to go beyond that. I had an interesting encounter in India, a country that was colonised by the British like Nigeria. You will assume that English will be taken for granted in India, but that is not the case. A lot of Indians cannot speak English fluently. I sought to find out why some educated professionals (doctors, nurses, bankers, politicians, civil servants, police, etc.) struggle to speak English. That was when my guide explained to me that in the Tamil- speaking part of India, as in other parts of India, the educational system is two-fold. You have schools where Tamil is the medium of communication and English is just a course and schools where English is the medium of communication. People who went to schools where English is the medium of communication speak fluent English while a lot of those who went to schools where Tamil is used to teach struggle with spoken and written English. What lessons do I want us to draw from this? Schools in Delta Central should not only make study of Urhobo language compulsory but it should also sometimes be used to teach other courses, at least to secondary school level. That way, our children’s written and spoken Urhobo will be strengthened. I am not suggesting anything that will also make our children struggle with English on the long run; I am sure this suggestion can be worked on and fine-tuned to strike the right balance.

Six, a Centre for study of Urhobo language should be set up within the department of Linguistics, Delta State University, Abraka and such centres should be encouraged in other non-technical higher institutions within Delta Central.

Seven, there should be aggressive investment in and production of more Urhobo literature. The Urhobo Progressive Union can be the chief driver of this initiative. We must find a way of publishing those beautiful folklores they used to tell us in those days, our traditional medicine and other parts of our traditions and practices. So, much has been lost already. We need to stem the tide.

Finally, I do realise that Delta is a multi-ethnic state and my suggestions are not exclusive to the Urhobo language; they can be replicated for other ethnic groups.

Oje Odifeh writes from Lagos