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 notproperly developed: Nations are built or developed through knowledge; and allforms of knowledge are transmitted through language. In other words,language mediates mental access to phenomena and, therefore, what weperceive is phenomena in the form in which language mediated our perception.1The fact of the mediations of mental access to phenomena by language makesknowledge communicable. While language mediates between object andperception, literature is an embodiment of object, language and perception.Therefore, when Nigerian literary works represent Nigerian reality, it isactually the object-Nigeria as an observable reality, which is mediated bylanguage 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 nationaldevelopment? This paper will show how the individual psyche of Nigerianscould be reformed, to make them conscious of the state of things in the polityand, thereby, awaken in them the need to change their situation and contributeto a sustainable national development.