This is a new year, and anything can happen at individual, family, community, organisational and national levels.
In the last edition of Reflections! published on New Year Day, I wrote about the power of hope and the possibilities that may lie ahead for our nation only if we could tone down our level of indiscipline as a people. In the midst of seeming despair and doom in the land, a lot of positive things are happening in and about Nigeria. Unfortunately, the negative happenings, as to be expected, have more attention. Make no mistake, these negative ones, some grotesque and bizarre, have more consequences on the generality of the people.
However, we cannot but acknowledge that it is not all doom. Barely a week into the new year, we got this news that 20 of our words and slangs have made their way into the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). “Japa”, “Agbero”, “Abi”, “Area Boy”, “Yahoo Boy”, “Naija”, “Suya”, even “419” are now English words!
Just to be sure, this is not the first time that Nigerian words would be included in the English vocabulary. The main reason may be because of the size of our population and the number of people using these words in their everyday conversations. The Nigerian population has grown very astronomically in the last few decades more than the population of other countries. It is alarmingly high. In fact, no country has overtaken us in population growth since 1950 when we were the 14th largest population in the world. Conversely, we have overtaken eight countries within the same period; and are now the 6th most populous nation on earth. While countries in Europe and North America are shrinking in size, we’re galloping up fast. Of the world’s 20 most populous nations, we have the highest growth rate apart from Ethiopia. But that’s a story for another day!
So, when a word gains currency in Nigeria and is used commonly across ethnic borders, it is given that it is being spoken by tens of millions of people, and stands a good chance of getting into the dictionary. Since after COVID-19, and the #EndSAS crisis, japa has become one of the most popular words in the Nigerian lexicon. A Yoruba word for migration or travel, it has become used very commonly in Lagos (with a population of 17.1 million people with a staggering 3.75% growth rate), a melting point of some sort, and with a population half the size of Ghana which has 35 million inhabitants (1.85% rate). Add the over 20 or so million other Nigerians outside Lagos who regularly use the word, japa cannot be ignored! The same goes for agbero and most of the other 18 words.
These words, among many others are a great part of the everyday conversations of most Nigerians, and they are making Pidgin English very popular. At the rate Nigeria’s population is ballooning, Pidgin English is probably the third most spoken indigenous language in Africa after Swahili and Hausa languages. Without any coordinated and deliberate efforts, Nigeria is gaining ground internationally and influencing popular global culture.
Hear a deservedly proud Kingsley Ugwuanyi, a Nigerian English consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary, “I’m thrilled to announce that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has officially published its latest updates, featuring an amazing collection of Nigerian English words that beautifully reflect Nigeria’s culture, creativity, and the unique ways we express ourselves as Nigerians. This time, I not only drafted most of the words but also had the incredible opportunity to provide their hashtag#pronunciations! So, when you explore the OED online and click on the pronunciations, you’ll hear my hashtag#voice bringing these words to life”.
This is not an isolated situation. The forays Nigerian Pentecostal Churches are making outside of Nigeria are simply phenomenal. There are somewhere around 5,000 Nigerian originating church branches in North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Especially in Europe and North America where minimum standards are higher and enforced, it takes no less than $50 thousand to start a standard church branch.
Nigerian Pastors of different ages are making waves and great impact globally. Apart from the better known Pastors Adeboye, Kumuyi, Oyedepo and a few others, the Jerry Ezes, the Poju Oyemades, the Paul Enenches, the Paul Adefarasins and the Joshua Selmans are taking the world by storm for Jesus.
You do not need to agree with me, Nigeria is clearly the midwife of the Christian revival movement in the world today. I was chatting with a Nigerian Pastor friend of mine who ‘has’ a thriving church in North America the other week about the influence of the country in that society. As if to confirm this trend, we had hardly concluded our conversation when news came that Nathaniel Bassey, easily one of the best known gospel singers in the country, had been invited to minister at the Donald Trump’s Presidential inaugural prayer breakfast. I choose to interpret it to mean victory for Nigeria, coming from a Donald Trump! This doesn’t vitiate the height Bassey has attained in his calling, and God’s special grace on him.
A similar phenomenon is happening to Nigerian music. Pioneered by the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti in the late eighties and nineties, Nigerian musicians have attained world acclaim. Today Asake, Wizkid, Burna Boy, Tems, Davido and a few others are global icons (please, don’t ask me what songs they sing because I do not know; I’m certainly not in that space!).
Nigeria also holds the title as producer of the most unicorns in Africa. In the business world, a unicorn is a privately owned startup company valued at over USD$1 billion. We have already produced five unicorns, more than Luxembourg and Italy (each has four!). As a Nigerian, I take pride in it. Interswitch, Flutterwave, OPay, Maser and Moniepoint are our headliners; and more are close to the finishing line.
I hope we know that our very own Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, makes a conservative $10 million a day! Do the math and you’ll realize that though you may not share in his wealth, it adds up in bolstering the country’s reputation in the international arena! Tony Elumelu doles out millions of dollars yearly to African young entrepreneurs.
All this, to my mind, implies the growing influence of Nigeria on a global scale. Despite the consistently bad governance in the country, the world cannot ignore Nigeria. Everyone knows that given the right leadership, Nigeria stands a chance of being perhaps the greatest nation on earth. But the world, especially the western world can’t afford to see that great nation image. So, for centuries, they have devised boobytraps with local neocolonial collaborators to keep us permanently stunted and incapable of rising to solve our problems.
Go to any city in the western world and you will see Nigerians in their hundreds and thousands excelling in different areas of human endeavours. At a colloquium a few years back, a former minister, who finished from the same school and time as Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of United Kingdom, said his friends and classmates in the UK would always ask him how come the country has people like him but still stays low.
Now that Japa has become an English word, one day, we will japarize (Ugwuanyi, is that a proverb or a past participle!) our politicians to Haiti so we can fix our country!
Esiere is a former journalist!
