Opinion: Much Ado About Arabic on Naira Notes and Nigerian Army Flag by Reno Omokri
Recently, a lawyer sued the Federal Government on the issue of Arabic inscriptions on our currency and on the Nigerian Army’s logo.
The fellow, Malcolm Omirhobo, wants the Federal High Court to declare as “illegal, unlawful, and unconstitutional to allow the Nigerian Army logo to be adorned, and inscribed in Arabic language, instead of the official English language or Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo which are the three main languages or ethnic groups in Nigeria.”
I see this as a function of ignorance, and I will explain. Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo are all spoken languages. None of them are written languages, although there does exist some limited form of writing among a few Nigerian tribes.
The Hausa people adapted Arabic into the ajami script, and the Igbo have an ancient pictogram writing st...