Abbas Yushau Yusuf
A professor of cultural communication professor Abdallah Uba Adamu says the coming of social media and other social networking sites have accelerated the promotion of the Hausa Language across the globe.
The University don made the statement in an interactive session with the NIGERIAN TRACKER at his office.
The pioneer Nigeria’s dual professor of science education and cultural communication has cleared the assertion being made by some individuals about making the Hausa language an option in secondary schools that the language is facing demotion.
Saudi Discovers 97 Year Old Whistle Of The Makkan Police
He says studying the Hausa Language in secondary schools is a way to pass exams but the language has gone beyond learning and teaching in schools and has passed the shores of Africa and spread to other continents across the globe due to the interactions and debate Hausa speakers are making on the internet.
The university don said they conducted a study on how Hausa speakers in Nigeria are debating about the issue of Nigeria’s disintegration being advocated by Indigenous people of Biafra IPOB noting that among major Nigerian languages which include Igbo and Yoruba, only Hausa speakers are debating about Nigeria’s disintegration and its unity in Hausa via the internet.
‘’But there is no social media or networking space where Yoruba’s and Igbos are found debating the National Question in their respective languages.
Therefore the coming of Facebook as a social networking site has accelerated the promotion of Hausa language beyond doubt’’
According to professor Abdallah Uba Adamu, the debate being made by the Hausa speakers has led to the spread of the language more than the curriculum.
He said in the past 20 years the university community created a Yahoo networking group where they had over 25 thousand participants but they were taken over by Facebook when Nigerians start participating in the year 2009.
The professor said we are not minding any orthography or sentences used by social media users but what we want is the debate going on between young Hausa speakers on cyberspace.
The university don added that the Hausa language has overshadowed African languages like Swahili.
Prof Uba added that in September 2022 they will convene a conference at the University of Hamburg in Germany about the Afrophone literature on the internet on how youth are using their social networking sites and the prevalence. of Hausa speakers on Facebook.
He noted that and in whole Africa there is no language that surpasses Hausa on the internet
He said the first policy on education over 400 years ago was initiated in Kano whereby we have over 250 thousand Tsangaya schools,then from the time of Emir Rumfa in 1463 Hausa got its first promotion by converting the language through western alphabets.
That was how Hausa was promoted became an international language
On the promotion of Ajami, the professor added that they have since come up with an Ajami newspaper called Tabarau so that it will transcend into the nook and crannies of Hausa states
