NEED TO PROMOTE BIAFRAN'S INDIGENOUS CULTURAL LANGUAGES

BIAFRA

Biafra is a country that has been richly blessed by God. She has been blessed in terms of resources (human and natural) fertile soil, and tourist attraction among others. Of all these, culture is our greatest gift as Biafrans. Our rich cultural heritage is something that I would be proud of always. As African's, we greatly revere culture. This is why in our society, we still accord due respect to our culture. A majority of our norms ranging from festivals to food, language and clothing and a host of others have been adopted from them. In times past, a different event has taken place as we all know, change is the only constant thing. Its so unfortunate that the coming of colonial master and the evolution into the modern age, have led to a great disrespect of our very rich cultures. Worst affect is our indigenous language.
Before the coming of the colonial master, we were able to communicate with our native languages, but when the British came, we treated them like "gods" we felt that they were superior beings, and we submitted willingly to their authority. We aspired to be like them and in no time, we relegated our cultures to the background and started to reason like a white man. We stopped communicating in our indigenous languages; we stop eating our local foods, we stop wearing our traditional wears, and also our women stopped making our cultural hair styles. The transition was drastic, and our cultures began to fade with our languages being a prime casualty. These tells us why the value of our cultures depreciate as a generation passes on.
As of today, people talking about Biafra never forget to mention the fact that it's an English speaking country for now, whereas, we have a very rich culture that is gradually being eroded. If one takes a look at our neighboring country, Ghana, one will mark some differences between the both countries. The first is the culture, Despite the fact that both countries were colonized by British, Ghanaians have continued to hold their cultures sacred. So, it pains me to hear  a Biafran child ask his parents "Which other language does Biafrans have apart from English?" These goes to show how our communications have become negligible, and this should not be.
Yes, not everything we practice back then was good but we ought to change for the better. The need for our cultures, especially our languages to be kept alive is very necessary and cannot over emphasized, from my thinking, if we do not realize this need and do something about it in the nearest feature, our culture would be nothing to talk about in time to come. Citizens should learn to develop an interest in our culture and languages so that in no time, we would discover that every cloud has a silver lining.


Written by David Chubby 
Editor Udeagha Obasi
for IPOB Writers