Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Monday, October 08, 2012

It's not just pidgin

What do your students make of this conversation?

"How bodi?"
"Wetin? I no sabi."
"Why you dey give me wahala? Comot! Dem send you?"
"I wan chop."
"Abeg! No waste my time! Make you no vex me!"

It's the best examples I can make of pidgin English from the "Beginners Guide to Nigerian pidgin English."

Outsiders have little chance of understanding pidgin unless they've been in the country for a long time and made efforts to learn the lingo. Pidgin is extremely popular in most parts of Africa… and has been accepted as the de-facto language of blue collar trade and merchants. Some of Lagos' most popular radio stations use pidgin exclusively. Pidgin remains the “great” equalizer.

With roughly 250 tribes speaking 521 languages and dialects, English is the country’s official business language.

For citizens without easy access to higher education and white collar jobs, picking up a few words of English and mixing it with elements of their native tongues has been the default way of communicating across tribal cultures.

But, even the use of English in the media can often cause me to scratch my head and rely on interpreters like the BBC.

Take for example this article from Leadership (Abuja), a prominent newspaper in the capital. While the words used can technically be accurate, several of them require me to think and read and translate carefully to understand the article. It's almost as though the journalist or the vice president consulted a thesaurus to find words that would offer more authoritativeness. I think of refugees when I hear "evacuation." And "arrest" to me has something to do with law enforcement. Not in this article.

This is one of my excuses for citing sources from outside of Nigeria more often than sources from within the country.

Sambo Orders Speedy Evacuation of Generated Electricity

Sambo

Vice President Namadi Sambo on Friday directed the Federal Ministry of Power to ensure speedy evacuation of power generated to ensure constant electricity supply across the country…

The vice president expressed delight with the current 4,200 megawatts of electricity generated by various power plants in the country.

He, however, decried the lack of integrity and associated problems of the transmission and distribution lines to evacuate the generated power.

Sambo directed the Ministry of Power and the NDPHC to ensure speedy completion of the transmission lines and the injection substation for the delivery of constant and stable electricity to Nigerians.

Earlier, the Minister of State for Power, Mr Darius Ishaku, said the country generates more than 4,200 megawatts of electricity.

He said the transmission and distribution network had integrity issues affecting the adequate evacuation of the generated power.

Ishaku assured the meeting that the ministry was doing everything possible to arrest the issue…