On Monday, the BBC launched its BBC
Pidgin, the first African digital service that aims to provide news, current
affairs and analysis of Nigeria, West and Central Africa
, as part of the
biggest expansion of its World Service since the 1940s.
As President
Muhammadu Buhari’s aircraft taxied along the runway of the Abuja International
Airport on Saturday, a presenter at one of Nigeria’s popular Pidgin radio
stations announced to his listeners:
“The
president don show.”
This Pidgin
expression translates to “The president is back,” an explanation that Nigeria’s
president has returned after a 103-day medical vacation in London.
Since the
launch of the Wazobia FM, the first Nigerian station to broadcast fully in
Pidgin, in 2007, the language has gained increased popularity as a medium of
choice for broadcast across the country and the sub-region.
On Monday,
the BBC launched its BBC Pidgin, the first African digital service that aims to
provide news, current affairs and analysis of Nigeria, West and Central Africa,
as part of the biggest expansion of its World Service since the 1940s.
“We are
really excited that this is the first fully digital service that the BBC is
offering in Africa and it is a really exciting opportunity for us,” Bilkisu
Labaran, the BBC Nigeria’s Editorial Lead, said in an interview with PREMIUM
TIMES.
“Pidgin is a
real language of opportunity across the region, spoken by millions across the
West and Central African region. It is spoken by 75 million people in Nigeria
alone. By the time you to Ghana, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Liberia, you are
speaking to millions and millions across this region.”
The West
African Pidgin English, also known as the Guinea Coast Creole English or Broken
English, originated during the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th and
18th centuries where it served as a language of communication between the
British slave merchants and local African traders.
It gradually
spread across other parts of West African colonies as a useful trade language,
particularly among local ethnic groups who spoke different languages.
There is no
official figure as to the precise number of Pidgin speakers in Nigeria but
estimates say as a second language, it is spoken by about half of the
population – up to 75 million people. And as one moves from southern to
northern Nigeria as well as across the sub-region, variants of the language are
common among the speakers.
Ms. Labaran
said the variants of Pidgin across the region would serve as an opportunity to
encourage a lot of engagement from the BBC’s audience.
“We have a
network of reporters from Ghana, Nigeria, and others so we could reflect those
variations,” she said.
“But with
that engagement with our audiences, we will get inputs from them or have a
robust debate on what’s the best way to write this word or that word, you know,
we will encourage all of that so we could engage one another in agreeing on
what’s the standardized way of writing something.
“This is an
opportunity, Pidgin is an informal language; it’s not a written language so the
BBC sees a role here in encouraging a discourse to reach that consensus so that
we will take that opportunity of Pidgin being a lingua franca across the region
to communicate.”
As part of
the British government’s new investment through the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office, FCO, the sum of £289 million worth of investment would be channelled
towards the launching of 12 new languages – six of them from Africa including
three from Nigeria.
In addition
to BBC Pidgin, broadcasts will also be launched in Afaan Oromo (Ethiopia);
Amharic (Ethiopia); Gujarati (India); Igbo (Nigeria); Korean (North Korea,
South Korea); Marathi (India); Punjabi (India, Pakistan); Serbian (Serbia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina), Telugu (India); Tigrinya (Ethiopia, Eritrea); and
Yoruba (Nigeria, Benin, Togo).
Currently,
the BBC World Service delivers content around the world in English and 28 other
language services on radio, TV, and digital, reaching a weekly audience of 269
million people. In Africa, contents are delivered in English, French, Hausa,
Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Somali, and Kiswahili.
But the
Pidgin Service hopes to make inroads in a region where the language is not
accepted as an official lingua franca and its use in schools are frowned upon
by the authorities.
Linguists,
however, maintain that Pidgin is a full language in its own right and has grown
to become a language of communication among young people mostly due to its
ability to bring people together as well as its expressive and fun nature.
In 2014,
then US ambassador to Nigeria, John Entwistle, caused a stir among listeners
when he responded in Pidgin to a question on live radio about his government’s
threat to sanction Nigeria after the country had signed the Same-Sex Marriage
(Prohibition) bill into law.
“People talk
about sanction, no be say US government know say sanction dey for Nigeria
because of same sex palava o,” Mr. Entwistle had said, which simply meant that
the US government was not aware of any sanctions on Nigeria because of the
Same-Sex law.
The success
of Wazobia FM after its debut a decade ago encouraged the launch of other fully
Pidgin radio stations in Nigeria; even Wazobia FM followed up its success with
the launch of Wazobia TV in 2014.
Some young
people interviewed by PREMIUM TIMES described the introduction of more Pidgin
broadcast services as a welcome development.
Simeon
Zagonde, a Lagos resident, said, “Personally to me, I don’t subscribe to it but
not everyone understands English, to me it’s welcome for those who cannot speak
English or any native language.”
Another
resident, Helen Mojisola, said, “It depends on their service and the sweetness
of the word pronunciation, it’s a great one but if they don’t handle it well,
it may not work.”
Already, the
BBC Minute (English), launched in 2015, and the BBC World Service are
partnering with local radio stations in countries around the world where
partners take BBC Minute and air them on their own stations, including other
versions like the ‘BBC Minute On..’ which focuses on a single subject in more
detail.
The BBC said
the new Pidgin Service is targeted at mostly the younger – and female –
audiences with social media playing a key role.
Ms. Labaran
said with Africa being the youngest continent in the world, it would be an
opportunity to serve its young population.
“We will be
known for the content that the BBC is traditionally known for which is the core
news, because this generation is a ‘switched on’ generation – they may be based
in Lagos, Yaounde, or Accra but they want to know what’s happening in Paris, in
Hong Kong, in Barcelona, everywhere,” she said.
“So we are
going to bring that core global news that is balanced, fair and impartial to
that audience but also other contents – they also want to know what Jay-Z and
Beyonce are doing; they want to know what D’banj goes to do in London; what
Tiwa Savage is doing in Paris.
“So it’s
connecting those worlds, bringing Africa to the world and bringing the world to
Africa.”
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