Language and Literature as Tools for Sustainable National Development in Nigeria

Abstract

No nation of the world attains any form of development when its people are not properly developed: Nations are built or developed through knowledge; and all forms of knowledge are transmitted through language. In other words, language mediates mental access to phenomena and, therefore, what we perceive is phenomena in the form in which language mediated our perception.1 The fact of the mediations of mental access to phenomena by language makes knowledge communicable. While language mediates between object and perception, literature is an embodiment of object, language and perception. Therefore, when Nigerian literary works represent Nigerian reality, it is actually the object-Nigeria as an observable reality, which is mediated by language expressed through the perception of the writer, the Nigerian writer. Will reading the literature, therefore, make one a better person? If it does, then, can that state of being a better person be made concrete and practical, according to Terry Eagleton for there to be any meaningful national development? This paper will show how the individual psyche of Nigerians could be reformed, to make them conscious of the state of things in the polity and, thereby, awaken in them the need to change their situation and contribute to a sustainable national development.