Language, Literature and Decolonization of Nigeria’s Political Culture (1)

By TONY AFEJUKU Every literature that exists does so because there is in existence a language in which it is created or expressed. In other words,  if there is no literature and there never can be literature in the absence of language. And so long as there are native speakers of any language, the language will thrive and live with or without the existence of creative or imaginative or realistic literature. What this urgently tells us or suggests to us is that language and literature, creative written literature, that is, can never be weighted equally. But let us attempt to prove the case we are tendering by asking the very familiar question: which comes first, the egg or the chicken? Perhaps this question is unnecessary in the context of the distinction I

have attempted to draw above. Thus one can say without qualms that language is both the egg and the chicken. Literature is because language is. It is not the other way round. In what we utter, that is, in our speeches we direct ourselves and each other in the society we inhabit to do one thing or the other. And in what we do through what we say, we express our culture. In pre-literate societies, meaning societies where one knew not how to write such as was the case before the white colonizers came to our respective communities; this was precisely what was the case. continued