By
Obododimma
Oha
59 years
after Nigeria’s “independence,” Onịcha is still written as “Onitsha,” ọka
as “Awka,” Enugwu as “Enugu” and Owere as “Owerri.” Is it that those who have
achieved “independence” have not gained enough consciousness to see these
spellings as wrong ones, as resulting from the wrong pronunciation of those
names, that the colonialists either approximated or simplified the names
(especially where there are phonemes they could not deal with) to something
else that suited them? The colonialist was, indeed, clever. It was not enough
to give them your language in order to rule them forever, but more
fundamentally to try and re-label them (especially because they won’t think of
changing the labels many years after). Buy a dog and give it any name you like;
after all, you own it and it must be subject to your representation of the
world. So, the spellings of the place names stay. They won’t think of their use
as colonial mentality, as a continuation of the master’s preferences and
governance at the sites of place spelling. Even if the spelling has
fallen from the master’s lips as he was chewing tobacco after going to jail
the natives for refusing to leave their festival to attend Empire Day!
I refuse to
accept that Nigeria does not have brilliant thinkers who have dazzled the world
with their ideas and who have understood colonialism in its many-faced, clever
forms. No; Nigeria is lucky and is blessed with great minds. But they only
preach to the external world. Charity does not begin at home, for them. Charity
loses voice when it comes to correcting and challenging colonial mentality. Oh,
why would they challenge the master that employs them, gives them fellowships
and grants, gives them visas, gives them residency, etc. In fact, a government
in Nigeria may also just be taking tutorials from the colonial masters from
time to time! Oh, how can anyone talk of challenging the master when there are
huge loans hanging over the country? As they say in Igbo, Onye aṅụṅụ ọgọdọ anaghị agbasi egwu ike (Somebody who has borrowed
a piece of clothing for an occasion does not dance ecstatically). You can guess
why. The piece of cloth may tear and the borrower would be in great trouble!
Oh, won’t they go to Chatham House to again to speak? Also, if you come down
hard on colonization as a ruler, how can you be sure your government would
survive, if it does not have problems? The domestic fowl drinks and looks
upward, not because it likes it. It is because of alertness; aviators that try
to pick it up usually come from there!
And so ọka
continues to be Awka, forever and ever. Even if it is the seat of state
government. Eko is even happy to be Lagos. With all the sirens blared by
federal government vehicles, when the city was federal capital. Now, with all
the sirens from Omo Eko themselves. What bothers one more is that government officials
who write Eko as “Lagos” are not arrested for wanting to arrogantly cross the
highway of colonial spatial deixis, instead of using the overhead bridges of
original names. Similarly, all the requests for the extension of road networks
to rural areas in Anambra State forget that good roads are the privileged
spellings endorsed by the Nwa DC or his representative, the kotuma.
For some
Nigerians who would not accept that retaining the colonial arrangement and all
its discomforts in order to preserve false idea of unity (a nation made in
Heaven and must not be altered) is now a psychiatric condition for them, this
retention of colonial labels is in order. Same way that the country cannot be
reinvented, for the colonial master created it on behalf of God. And so, even
though those of us who are intellectuals talk of countries as imagined communities,
even though we witnessed Czeck and Slovakia become Czechoslovakia, later
coming apart to become two separate countries, Szech and Slovakia, this does
not apply to the giant of Africa. A colonial master gave birth to it and this
child must be preserved, even at all costs, whether a colonial geography or
not.
Consider this
laughable situation. Armed robbers visit your house and ask everyone to lie
facedown. You comply. They hold you all hostage and ransack the house for money
and other valuables! Later, they leave with whatever they can find! But, you are
still lying there, facedown and shivering. Get up and at least
receive sympathizers who have arrived. Do you know that you are that spineless
fellow lying facedown still, if you think that it is not acceptable for anyone
to say that groups which make up a former country have no right to opt out of
the illegal union or to negotiate a new nationhood of their choice?
The retention
of all other errors in the colonial structure is in agreement with that fear of
Nwa DC and his kotuma. As long as Nwa DC remains a deity in the minds of the
African “natives,” who has the courage to reverse “Awka” to look like an Igbo
name that it should be? As long as there is Nwa DC, Enugwu is “Enugu,” but
above all, the mispronunciation of Nwa DC is even preferable; it is civilized
and hippy! The sounds of your speech or graphics of your writing indicate to us
whether you are a person of the light or of the darkness and the jungle. If you
can twist or distort your speech, your kinsfolk will clap for you as somebody
who has gone out to the land of the spirits. You are the new Ojaadili and has
wrestled with the small deity who claims to be your chi.
But we can
leave government officials and government documents and proceed to write Owere
as Owere, Onicha as Onicha, Enugwu as Enugwu. It is an education that can go on
without them.
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