North Using Hausa Language To Enslave Nigerians – Femi Fani-Kayode

Former aviation minister, Femi Fani-Kayode has accused northerners of plotting to use the Hausa Language to enslave Nigerians.

Fani-Kayode made the comment via an article titled “Language as a tool of conquest”.

Read the article below:
In the northern part of Nigeria two vessels were used as vehicles for conquest by the Fulani: religion and language. Islam was imposed by the force of arms and the use of the sword by Sheik Usman Dan Fodio whilst hausa, the language of the conquered people of the old Habe kingdom, was adopted as the official language of the new Fulani caliphate.

As brilliant and calculating as ever, the Fulani ruling class insisted that Fulfulde, their own native language, was spoken only by the Fulani themselves. To them theirs was the language of emperors, kings and conquerors and they refused to allow their subjects and vassals to speak or learn it because they considered them to be nothing more than serfs and slaves.

For the conquered it was Hausa that was to be spoken and not Fulfulde because the latter was considered to be too good for them. There are over 100 distinct and independent ethnic groups in northern Nigeria, each with their own cultural and historical heritage and distinct language, yet they are all compelled to speak Hausa.

Some of them have even forgotten their own native language or never learnt to speak it in the first place. Others do not know who they are or where they are coming from. Some do not even know that they ever had a language or heritage of their own. Everything for them, from beginning to end, has become Hausa. This speaks volumes.

Ironically the white Boers of apartheid South Africa, who were originally from Holland, adopted the same strategy of linguistic and cultural conquest when they arrived in southern Africa and established their hegemony and racist enclave in the 17th century.

Their native language was Afrikaans (which was a local derivative of the Dutch language) and, like the Fulanis of northern Nigeria, for many generations they ensured that only they were allowed to speak it.

The black South African natives were not taught Afrikaans and they were not allowed to speak it because it was considered to be the language of the elite ruling class and their racial masters.

Allowing them to speak it would bear the implication that they were on the same level as their religious, racial and cultural masters and that was unacceptable.

They were only allowed to communicate in their own native African languages and English. This was very effective and it essentially kept the conquered in their place whilst it exalted the conqueror. That is the power and secret of language and linguistic conquest.

It is for this reason that the people of France, for example, refuse to speak English with you when you are in their country even though their English may be fluent. They recognise the fact that once they adopt another man’s language as being the one that is commonly used in their own land it is an acceptance of subjugation.

They acknowledge the fact that such a concession or, to use a more appropriate word, “submission”, is essentially an acceptance and wholehearted espousal of a sinister and subtle form of cultural and linguistic imperialism. Worst still it is symptomatic of the fact that your own culture and language no longer bears any relevance or has any value.

The English, who are undoubtedly the masters of the game when it comes to the art of cultural and linguistic imperialism, did it successfully to the Scottish, the Welsh and the Irish, all of whom had and spoke their own distinct languages until they were conquered and subjugated and turned into vassal states.