Henry Okonkwo
Mr Kingsley Ugwuanyi is one of the many academics Nigeria can boast of today. He is a researcher in socio-linguistics at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom. And it was his valuable contributions alongside Kola Tubosun, that saw to the addition of 29 Nigerian lexicons into the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
In this interview, Ugwuanyi, also an English teacher at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, gave touching narratives about his poor background, his latest achievement at the OED, and how Nigeria can encourage more innovations amongst its academics and researchers.
Tell us a little about your growing up years before you came to limelight?
I was born in a family of six, and I’m the last child. And I spent few years with my mother in the village, before I moved on to live with my eldest sister, and then, later on, returned to the village. Generally speaking, I grew up in a rural community known as Eha-Alumona in Nsukka. I went to Boys Secondary School, Nru, Nsukka. I’m the first and only person in my family to go to the university, most of my older siblings just finished secondary school, just one of my elder sisters also have an NCE. I’m the only one to have a university degree. I come from a very low background. But instead of that stopping me, that was the push I had. Because I knew that the only option I had was to become excellent in my studies, or go back and suffer in poverty. In fact, while growing up I was already lined up to go join my elder brothers who went into business and artisanship. But I remember very vividly that my immediate elder brother who had gone to join business wrote me a letter and said that he would want me to go to university when I finish secondary instead of going into business. He reasoned that everybody in my family should not go into business. So, that was one of the inspirations I had that pushed me on. Initially, I wanted to study Law, my first JAMB was in 2002 to study Law the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. And I didn’t get the admission because I couldn’t make the cut-off mark. But my second choice was Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka where I wanted to study Linguistics. My father wasn’t so comfortable with it. So, I had to miss the admission that year. The following year, I had lost interest in Law. My passion to study the English Language had become stronger. So, I didn’t tell anybody, I had to put it and went to study it at UNN. It was a very tough experience. I came into the department in 2004 after I lost a year to ASUU strike. I wrote JAMB in 2003, but had to stay at home till 2004. I didn’t stay idle. It would surprise many people that during that year, I had to do Okada business. I couldn’t just sit at home idling away my time, so I had to go hire a bike to do Okada. And it was successful, within that one year, I was able to raise money, supported by my sister to buy my own bike. Thereafter, I proceeded to pay my first and second-year school fees, and because I had my own bike as a student, once in a while I still did Okada business to support myself because there was nobody so to speak in my family to fully sponsor me with school fees and pocket money. So, I went through school training myself till around my third and final year that my brother started to support me a bit.
Now, how did you start the move for addition of Nigerian English words to the OED?
My journey with the OED started in 2017 when I served as an Igbo language translator for their English-Igbo Bilingual Dictionary, which is part of their Oxford Global Languages project. While on the translation project, I encountered one of the editors at Oxford who took an interest in my doctoral research, which focuses on Nigerian English. Following our interactions, she linked me up with the World English team of editors at Oxford. I was then contacted in early 2018 to serve as the consultant to the Nigerian English project. OED uses an in-house corpus (a digital database of written and spoken samples of language) to record/track new words emerging from the English-speaking world. So, they had already prepared a long list of potential words for inclusion for Nigerian English, generated from the corpus. I was sent this list for my input. Based on frequency of use, widespread use and other criteria, this set of 29 words were selected for initial inclusion. These words have been included in the OED because we have found sufficient evidence of their use in English for a reasonable amount of time. We worked on these words (their definitions, history, examples, pronunciations, and nuances) till late last year.
What are the gains of this achievement to Nigerian languages and for the country generally?
I think this is really significant for Nigeria as a country and for indigenous Nigerian languages. First, I believe this has put Nigeria in the map of English-speaking world. It has further given credibility to Nigerian English. As a researcher and advocate of Nigerian English, I’ve had to explain my heart out to people whenever I mention to them that I’m studying Nigerian English. Granted, this is not going to be an automatic end to people asking ‘doubting questions’. But I think it will help. Also being that most of these words come from Nigerian languages (e.g., ‘Tokunbo’, ‘Egusi’, ‘Buka’), it is also, in a sense, promoting the languages from where they come.
With this achievement, where do you foresee Nigerian English in the coming years?
Well, I see Nigerian English continuing to grow. But it must be pointed out that there are many factors that contribute to the growth of a language (variety). The inclusion of words in a prestigious dictionary like Oxford is just one of them. Another, which I consider extremely important, is people actually using these words in a range of domains. And also what speakers’ attitudes towards the language are – and this is the focus of my research. As you know that language grows, I anticipate that Nigerian English will continue to develop, perhaps to the point that most people, the world over, feels at home with it.
What can Nigeria as a country do to foster more innovativeness among our academicians and researchers?
There is a wide range of things that Nigeria as a country can do. One is to genuinely reward excellence. Nigeria is not a country that rewards excellence. Nigeria rewards mediocrity. People who are celebrated are people who can make the noise. But people who are genuinely driving innovativeness in the academia and in the industry are hardly celebrated and recognized. There are many academics who are innovating things, who are driving change in Nigeria, but then these ones are not encouraged. How do you encourage them? By recognition and funding. There are projects upon projects that are churned out daily. For instance, I have a friend who teaches in Abia State. He did research on how you can convert soak-away in your house into cooking gas. So, something would be designed to supply the gas from the soak-away to the kitchen for cooking. And this is something that has value. If that kind of project is encouraged so that it would be commercialized, you wouldn’t imagine how much that would change households in Nigeria. This is just one example because I know him. But there are several other Nigerian academics in Nigerian institutions developing a lot of things that are not even heard of. At UNN in the Engineering Department, there have been student projects developing mini-vehicles, but you just get to hear it in few months after which everything dies down. People are not motivated or encouraged. Nigerians are very creative and innovative, but you’ll hear a lot of young people say that Nigeria is a killer of dreams. And that is true. I know someone who developed something like a bulletproof that would be useful for the police. So, he went straight to the police authorities where it was tested and found to be good. But he was shut up, and severely warned not to mention it again. That was how that dream died. There are many more instances. Then, there is a need for more funding for education. Education in Nigeria is not funded as it should. That’s the truth. TETFUND (Tertiary Education Trust Fund) as far as I know from my own university and other places, is given based on who you know. If you don’t know someone that knows someone, most times you won’t get the funding. But that’s not how it should be. In 2015, I remember applying for funding to attend a conference in Germany. I applied for the funds with other colleagues in my department, and till today, I didn’t get a reply, but some of my colleagues that applied got a reply while some got funded. But I didn’t get because I knew nobody. Funds should be given based on excellence and merits. The last point is that I feel that there’s a disconnect between the academia and the industry. I think there should be more integration and synergy between the academia and the industries. In the UK where I live, there’s a lot of connection and integration, many times you find industries fund research. Industries are in collaboration with the departments doing the things related to what they are doing. I don’t know of many companies in Nigeria that fund research in our academic institutions, but we need more. So that the research output from these academic institutions will be useful to the policymakers and the industry. I feel these three things would encourage more innovativeness among Nigerian academics.