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“For the boys who will never be known

And the girls who become numbers”

– Stars without a Name

            If you have been wondering how the recent happenings in the north-eastern part of the country are going to turn out, you might as well stop wondering and pick up Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday to check if it fits into what you thought they would look like. Not only has Elnathan John ventured into the murky waters of insurgency in the North-East, he has tried as best as he can to explain some of the things happening in the North-east so that those who have never been there nor know next to nothing about what operates in the north-eastern part of Nigeria can understand to a certain extent what the Boko Haram insurgency is all about without having to grapple with details. Elnathan brings to bear the situation in this part of the country through an engrossing story told by a young boy, Dantala, whose growth we witness, from boyhood to manhood.

Divided into four parts with 263 pages, is a book that chronicles the coming of age of Dantala from an innocent Almajiri who learns at the feet of Mallam Jinadu, to a street urchin under the tutelage of Banda, to a mosque boy taken in and groomed by Sheikh Jamal and finally a black spirit, resolute even in the face of death.

The book Born on a Tuesday takes its title from the name of the protagonist Dantala which means someone born on a Tuesday (P.33).  It is narrated in the first person point of view which makes it more personal to the reader. It starts in Bayan Layi, in 2003 where we are introduced to the life of street urchins in the northern part of Nigeria as told by Dantala, a young Almajiri who ends up under the Kuka tree because of circumstances beyond his control. Who sends a child off to a Quaranic school under the instructions of a stranger for 12 years without checking on him and expects the child to turn out okay and return as a perfect man in the sight of Allah and his people?

Elnathan John touches on how politics is a tool that fuels the crisis in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. Although according to the book, the crisis between the Shia and Shiites has been in existence as far back as when Islam started, the elections were what opened the door to insurgency. Crisis are fueled by the politicians who give money to religious leaders to gain their supports causing division between ‘brothers’ who are supposed to have each other’s back.

Religion is supposed to bring equality among all but thanks to Born on a Tuesday, we now know that bigotry also exists in the religious circle. Mallam Abdul-Nur’s betrayal was alluded to him being a Yoruba man and according to Sheikh Jamal,

A Yoruba man is a Yoruba man.

No matter how Muslim they become.

They stab you in the back.

That is how they are. Hypocrites. (p.210)

            Elnathan John does not just leave it at politics, religion and insurgency; he delves into issues like homosexuality, masturbation, adultery and prostitution which are usually not talked about whenever religion is discussed. Dantala’s inability to confront Abdulkareem and Bilal about what he sees and the Sheikh’s decision to ignore Dantala’s masturbation to talk about marriage shows the hypocrisy in the religious circle concerning issues like this.

Worthy of note is Dantala’s journal entries which started when Jibril starts to teach him English. These entries though in simple English which sometimes are wrongly made and cancelled reflects Dantala’s inner thoughts. They are deep and although they are sometimes serious, there are times when you can’t keep yourself from smiling at the humour presented in the narrations.

Born on a Tuesday is such a good read and until you have read it, you just might not understand what it really is about when they say ‘every king was once a crying baby’. We are first humans before religion, culture and tribe separates us.

Thanks Elnathan for bringing to mind the Burni Yadi boys who were murdered in their sleep at Federal Government College Burni Yadi, Yobe on the 25th of February 2014 and the 276 Chibok girls kidnapped from their dormitory at Government College Chibok, Borno State on 14th of April same year.

 

 

In the beginning, the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. This gave mankind the opportunity to think with oneness of mind. They decided to build a tower that will reach unto Heaven. God saw no reason for this and He confused the source of their agreement – language. As it happened in the beginning, it is happening now. The world has started speaking one language and that language is English.
In this era of globalization and technology, English dominates the world as no language ever has and it appears that it may never be dethroned as the king of languages. Some linguists still insist that linguistic evolution will continue to take its course over the centuries and that English could eventually die as a common language as Latin did, or Phoenician or Sanskrit or Sogdian before it.
The factors that underscore the grip English has on the world are disasters like war or climate change that causes people to migrate or the eventual perfection of translation machine that would make a common language necessary. The current migration of Syrians to Europe especially Britain, America and other English speaking countries will increase the number of English speakers in the world as these migrants would have to learn the language of their new host and use less their native languages (Arabic and Kurdish).

Lingua
Exploring some of the opinions of these linguists, mostly American, the scepticism that the future of English is very bright seems to be a minority view. Experts on the English language like David Cristal, author of “English as a Global Language” said that the world has changed so drastically that history is no longer a guide. He pointed out that this is the first time we actually have a language spoken genuinely globally by every country in the world, and that there are no precedents to help us see what will happen.
John McWhorter, a linguist at the Manhattan Institute, a research group in New York and the author of a history of language called “The Power of Babel”, was more unequivocal. He said that English is dominant in a way that no language has ever been before. It is vastly unclear to him what actual mechanism could uproot English given conditions as they are.
In this new millennium, about one fourth of the world’s population can communicate to some degree in English. It is the common language in almost every endeavour, from science to air traffic control to the global Jihad, where it is apparently the means of communication between speakers of Arabic and other languages. It has consolidated its dominance as the language of the internet, where 80 percent of the world’s electronically stored information is in English. The world is currently experiencing a dominance of English language in technological inventions. For example, most mobile phones and tablets that are being used in the world today have their preinstalled applications in English though provision for a change of language is made available in the settings. According to David Graddol, a linguist and researcher, English is spoken across cultures and it is mostly language of instructions at schools. Children are taught the language to help them become citizens of an increasingly intertwined world. At telephone call centres around the world, the emblem of a globalized workplace, the language spoken is naturally English. In countries where English is used as the second language, broadcasting stations cast their news in English language before their native languages. English has become the second language of everybody, it has gotten to the point where almost in any part of the world to be educated means to communicate in English.
As English continue to spread, the linguists say, it is fragmenting as Latin did, into a family of dialects – and perhaps, eventually fully fledged languages – known as Englishes. A full fledge fragmentation of English may see to the end of the real English we know. New vernaculars have emerged in such places as Singapore, Nigeria and the Caribbean, although widespread literacy and mass communication may be slowing the natural process of diversification. The pidgin of Papua New Guinea already has its own literature and translations of Shakespeare. On the other hand, unlike Latin and other former common languages, English seems to be too widespread and too deeply entrenched to die out instead, it is likely to survive in some simplified international form – sometimes called Globish or World Standard Spoken English – side by side with its offspring.
“You have too many words in English,” said Jean – Paul Nerriere, a retired Vice President of IBM, USA who is French. He has proposed his own version of Globish that would have just 15,000 simple words for use by non-native speakers. “We are a majority,” Nerriere said, “so our way of speaking English should be the official way of speaking English”. While Paul proposed Globish for diverse use especially among non-native speakers, Robert McCrum, the literary editor of the London Observer saw it as an economic phenomenon.
As a simplified form of global English emerges, the diverging forms spoken in Britain and America could become no more than local dialects – two more Englishes alongside the Singlish spoken in Singapore or the Taglish spoken in the Philipines. A native speaker of English might need to become bilingual in his own language to converse with other speakers of global English. Crystal wrote that we may well be approaching a critical moment in human linguistic history and that it is possible that a global language will emerge only once.
The dominance English has on the world today is as a result of successive English – speaking empires; British and American, and continues with the new virtual empire of the internet.
The teaching of English has become a multibillion – dollar industry, and according to Graddol, nearly one-third of the world’s population will soon be studying English. In fact, to enter higher institution in Nigeria and some other countries of the world, at least a pass at credit level in English is required. Most overseas higher institutions require a test of English for an international student who doesn’t speak English as a native language before he/she can gain admission.
By the most common estimates, 400million people speak English as first language, another 300million to 500 million as a fluent second language and perhaps 750million as foreign language. The largest English – speaking nation in the world, the United States, has only about 20 percent of the world’s English speakers. In Asia alone, an estimated 350 million people speak English, about the same as the combined English – speaking populations of Britain, the United States and Canada. In Africa, about 200million people speak the language. David Crystal puts the current estimates of English speakers in the world at 1.5 billion. Thus, the English language no longer belongs to its native speakers but to the world.

A non-native English speaker Yilin Sun, a Chinese, is the current president of the International Association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages known as TESOL. Even if English were somehow to collapse as the language of its birthplace, England, Crystal said, it would continue its worldwide dominance unperturbed.
The people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it, creating pidgins and creoles. The advance of technology that helped push English into its dominance position could pull it down again. Though it still sounds like science fiction, it seems likely that some time, many decades from now a machine will be perfected that can produce Yoruba when it hears someone speaking German. The sociolinguistic fact remains that the dominance of a language endangers and forces other languages into extinction. This has prompted organisation like the Living Tongues in the United States to promote the documentation, maintenance, preservation and revitalization of endangered languages all over the world. Tertiary institutions in Africa especially in Nigeria where at least 512 languages are currently being spoken are gathering word list of these languages for the purpose of research and documentation. Whether English language fragments into Englishes and a standard form like Globish as proposed emerges or it continues its dominance as the king of languages the fact is that the world has started speaking one language.

In Nigerian context, there are two categories of youths being
permutated by the phenomenon of the country’s situation. The
circumstantially derailed ones hiding under the facade of western
education, and the inherently disillusioned ones shielding away from
the ugly realities of life. Of course, like any other youths in the
Caribbean, they are born with their central nervous system, well
modeled and intact. Save the several intrinsic tendencies like
genetics that can likely influence a man’s growth mechanism –
environmental factor plays the biggest role. The kind of environment a
man naturally finds himself plays a huge role on his personal
dispositions towards life. Such is the case of a typical Nigerian
youth.

An average Nigerian youth can be the best anywhere, given the spate of
material and intellectual resources the country is inherently blessed
with. He can be the next William Shakespeare the world would birth, if
he glory in the domain of literature. Much alike, he may thread
treasurely behind Lionel Messi, if his dribbling skills is well
channeled along the competitive divides. At his creative best, he can
exhibit at peak any extra-ordinary potential quite elusive in the
contemporary world. In what seems mythical and unfathomable, the rarity
of the Nigerian breeds in any worldly calling is a testimony to the
beauty of creation.

However, as innovative and awe-inspiring the Nigerian youths could be,
the bottom line is that, they have refused to grow. They are like the
germinating rice plantation struggling to survive in the swamp. They
have mortgaged their future to those xenophilic individuals, who will
rather invest massively abroad than overhaul the dwindling state of
economy at home. Meanwhile, the average youths at home are managing to
scale the rigorous hurdles of primary to university education, for
which employment is like a gold dust. Basic social infrastructures
expected of any meaningful nation, are grossly inadequate. The
educational system is in comatose, with no anointed ones to resurrect
it within. No day elapses without the scattered news of citizens
protesting power failure, low access to health care, increased
mortality rate, among other social pandemics plaguing the nation. They
all want a magical handiwork that will elevate the status of the
country from a mere geographical expression to a complete formidable
structure. And the question is, where are the youths?

Of course, the Nigerian youths are everywhere, in the nooks and
cranny. They are at the clubs dancing away the nights, with the
assurance that tomorrow will berth a new tune. They become drunk with
euphoria, rocking away the complexity destiny has offered. Desirously,
through being hoodwink into leasing away the future; their stream of
consciousness becomes vague, yearning for a new flow of breath. They
are there, romancing the night alongside its conviviality.

Amidst this conflicting irony of affairs, not only the intellectually
brewed are sacred, this set of youths are cheap commodities within the
four walls of garages, soccer show rooms, “baba ijebu” and slums. They
are the font and “origo”, the supremo limo of those caliber of people,
fate would boastfully tagged failure. They are there, forming assembly
of malnourished minds, sipping cups of fermented wine, while the wave
of time erodes away their ageing prospects. Rhythm of salvation they
would always frown at, as nerves for actions remain missing in their
life anatomy. They will never cease rebuking the gods for their own
portion of destiny, until the lustful moments fade away. Hence, they
unleash vengeance on the innocent ones going about their daily
commitments. They are physically upright, yet paralyzed.

In town, on gown, this same set of youths are outwardly transgeneric,
lobbying their way to the academia. They are the means to all sorts of
rots in our ivory towers. They scale the fence to wealth, covering
with pretense of safeguarding their fellows’ rights. Of course, they
receive the nods and shakes of the kings, vice chancellors, provosts,
among others within the topmost echelons of the academia and society.
It is inherent in them, the will and greed to exercise dominion on
every available instance. They draw in passionately the sympathy of
fellow students, while championing the ruthless course to their greedy
stomach. They are the freedom fighters – the heroic villains of their
alma-maters.

While being earnest with the narratives of history, it is high time the
Nigerian youths assumed the resonating waves their contemporaries are
tiding in the ocean of realities. They need to wake up from their
slumbers, and engender a culture of reproductive thinking and actions.
Youth unemployment is the Trojan horse. It is fast consuming the
intellects and
energy of supposed vibrant youths. Hence, the Nigerian youths have to
outgrow this draining spirit of over dependence – the glorified pathway
to hereditary failure. As inspired by a famous philosopher, think not
what the country can do for you, but what you can do for the country.
What can the Nigerian youths do for the upliftment of the nation? The
question raises a pointer on every young mind, including me and you.
We are the future the history is forecasting. Why not moving an edge?

Scrolling through the cable trying to get through the boring Sunday noon, stumbled upon this show called Africa Straight Up. It’s a mini documentary telling a story and giving an insight to how Africa is the future of the world. Couldn’t help but agree to the notion. With the resources (which are terribly mismanaged due to poor governance) Africa got we are truly the future of this world. Read Tom Burgis’s The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth; some weeks back and couldn’t help but to agree with how he sees Africa – a continent with third of the Earth’s mineral deposits and some of its weakest institutions as being particularly vulnerable to the predations that arise from the combination of mineral wealth and poor governance.

Most captivating part of the documentary was when a final year Harvard student made a comment; “I’m going back home to join force with other young talented people to help develop my country. I got nothing to impact in America or Europe, they got enough brain needed for any form of development they wish to attain” she said.
Her comment gave me the thought of brain drain. Brain drain! Brain drain!! Brain drain!!!

Brain drain refers to the emigration of intelligent, well-educated individuals to somewhere for better pay or condition, causing the place they came from to lose those skilled people, or “brains”. This happens when people perceive that the leadership of a country is unstable or stagnant and thus, unable to keep up with their personal and professional ambition.

Brain drain is actually having it toil on Africa. It has led to loss of human capital, decline in economic development, affected the health sector in Africa. According to a BBC report back in 2001, brain drain cost the African continent over $4 billion (will be triple by now) in the employment of 150,000 expatriate professionals annually with Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya believed to be the most affected.

If we actually have an in-depth look at it, poor governance and lack of adequate utilization of resource are major causes of brain drain. But we shouldn’t just keep mute and let the brains that will help build and shape Africa better continue to drain away or die in the Mediterranean. We should start by standing up for what’s true and right; ensure those we vote for are those with the vision to create an atmosphere that would help talents flourish; let our vote count, supporting and working together with those with good intentions for the development of individual African country. I’m on the side that brain drain indeed has dug a hole in the better development of Africa.

I’m not implying that the brains available aren’t trying their possible best. Don’t know about you but I believe if brain drain can be curbed, our development rate will increase. We need more brain. NO ONE CAN DO IT BUT US.

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