Don seeks abrogation of legislations denying citizens access to information
By Stephen Olufemi Oni, Ilorin
A Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Ilorin, Sola Timothy Babatunde, has called for the abrogation of all forms of legislations in Nigeria that deny citizens access to information and prevent them from freely expressing themselves, describing such legislations as obnoxious and ungodly.
Babatunde, who delivered the 215th Inaugural Lecture of the University of Ilorin, opined that God created man for self-expression, and nothing should be done to create man anew, adding: “The only snag is that language should be used to encourage one another and not to fatally hurt one another.
“When language is used with the mind of presenting the integrity of the language user and recognising the potential damage wrong use of language can engender, cordial human relations will be established in the home, in the community and in the society at large. The import of this for nation building and national development cannot be overemphasized.
“God recognised the need for man to have self-expression at the beginning because self-expression gives meaning to life. As such, nothing should be done to muffle human beings by denying them this opportunity.”
The Inaugural Lecturer stressed the need for the people to adopt a progressive live-and-,let-live attitude to national, family and individual language planning, saying English language cannot function independently to handle the volume and varieties of communication challenges being confronted daily in a multilingual society like Nigeria.
He added: “Nigerians must be functional literate in as many indigenous languages as possible; that is apart from learning and using the English language.”
Babatunde urged caution on the literary texts recommended for teaching literary appreciation, saying literary texts prescribed should be those which paint such pictures that would sensitise the readers to positive social action, not the ones promoting all kinds of moral perversion in the society.
To the Inaugural Lecturer, discourse analysis should be in the mainstream of literary analysis so that students can easily perceive the necessary linguistic features that would enhance effective understanding and appreciation of the writers’ intentions, adding that; “This natural desire for imaginative response is also accountable for the creative response of Nigerian English to World Englishes, as exemplified in the reactions to Covid-19.
“Experience has shown that the Use of English courses taken by undergraduates in their first year of registration is not adequate for handling the various ways on which the language will be used in pursuing their education in the University.”
He has therefore recommended that two other courses with emphasis on speaking and writing skills be made available to the students up to their third year of registration in the University, saying this would help them when writing their degree essays in their final year.
Training in every discipline, the Inaugural Lecturer opined, should be interested on developing the human mind for creative imagination, saying that is how to bring individual and societal fulfilment to bear on the global multifarious agenda.
Babatunde stressed the importance of “the knowledge of clause structuring and the logico-semantic import of the structuring,” saying it “can profoundly enhance effective encoding and decoding linguistic communication, in addition to to shared contextual information.”