I will like to tickle your fancy a little about the presence of Benin people in diaspora. In the 1950s to early 1970s, it was often said that we do not travel out of Benin city. We were mocked by other ethnic nationalities as some Benins were seen living in their family homes instead of renting houses out of their families’. The reason for this stay at home was due to Benin city being the headquarters of Midwestern region ( later Bendel state).
The new jobs and economic opportunities created as a result, held Benin people back in the city.
Things began to change after the end of the Nigerian-Biafran civil war in 1970. War, the say, often opens up new and fresh consciousness. Benins lashed upon this and began to travel to Europe and America for studies after which they returned home for jobs and remain in their country for the rest of their lives. This was not to last long as the hardship of the economic policy of 1986 Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, till date, have not resulted in an equitable distribution of incomes for all the populace. It was at this point in the late 1980s that EXODUS of our people took an alarming turn.
Today there are hardly any country on this planet that you do not find a Benin man or woman. As at the year 2000, a Benin woman, resident in Japan, revealed that three out of five Africans living in Japan are Benins. Says much about how things have changed for our people who were teased as Ekpowa (wall gecko) in the pre-seventies Nigeria.
As a people who know that they had an enviable past in the Benin Empire that covered almost one-third-areas of the West-African sub-region, we will be doing our selves a service if we do not forget what made us a proud people in our history. A people who do not know their past cannot have a clear vision of their future. This is why we must, as of necessity and wisdom, not only torediscover ourselves but must seek to impact same onto our children in diaspora. The common saying that “my children understand our language but cannot speak in it” does not tell well of a high education earned by such parents for creative survival.
This is so as the late literary guru, Chinue Achebe, proved, with his most popular book, “Things Fall Apart”. If the great sage, in academics, was not good in both Igbo and English languages, he would not have achieved that height of excellence. We should do well to impact our Benin language to our children at home during their formative years of two to seven years of age. The brain of a child within the aforementioned bracket of ages has beenconfirmed, by Psychologists, as the most highly magnetic period in the human training process. It is only at home, in foreign lands, we can train our children to master our Benin language.
Benin language foundation at home will not hamper their ability to acquire other languages when they are eventually introduce at six years of age to school. After all, those of us who are parents of today encounter the Queen’s English for the first time at six or seven years when we began school. Yet we can read and write with it today. This means our children would do better than us if they are allowed the benefit of two or more languages acquisition in theirformative years.
We must also endeavour to teach our children our history, some salient and vibrant customs/traditions of our people, like our morning greetings, which, in history, is our social DNA by which someone is identified with a family.
Emokpae Odigie
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