How Desert Herald Murders English?

By

Saka Raji Audu

sakaraj@yahoo.com  

 

The essence of writing or speech making in whatever language is for one to clearly and precisely state one's views, opinions or line of thoughts that readers or listeners should be able to understand, digest and act accordingly. It therefore, means that whatever language one chooses to communicate with, one should not fail to respect and abide by the language rules in order to enhance the communicative competence required of such language.

 

Written communication in particular requires a strict discipline in the way and manner one puts down one's line of thoughts because, reference could always be made to them. English language, as we know, is not our Mother Tongue (MT). It falls under the second or even third language (L2) or (L3) of most Nigerians. It is also regarded as the generally accepted language of communication in the country and therefore, often referred to as the country's "lingua-franca." This is why most media in the country, electronic or print, use it as language of communication because it is the language that ties us together.

 

It is however pertinent to point out that writing in English is not as easy as one would like to assume. It is perhaps not also as difficult as one perceives it. But the carelessness, with which one uses it, is the issue that one should look at. This is why we still read or hear such wrong expressions  as "cannot be able", "extreme end", "cope up with", "should in case", "lost and found", etc from some educated Nigerians including Professors. It is in this retrospect that people with good command of English language and communicative competence are often employed as editors by our media houses.

 

The chief function of the editors is to serve as "gate-keepers" and "eyes" of the medium, in order to do away with libels, slanders and expressions that are capable of undermining the acceptance and integrity of either a newspaper or magazine. In a competitive environment like Nigeria where readers have got choices to make from the lots of available publications, every responsible editor worth his sort would always like to create taste for his newspaper and magazine. This is in terms of factual news and how it is relayed or conveyed to the readers. Thus, any newspaper or magazine that does not pay high premium to facts, accuracy and good communication skills could always be classified into the category of junk newspaper or magazine. This is where the notorious weekly newspaper, the Desert Herald, belongs and thus referred to as "THE BOKO HARAM OF THE NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS." Please, note that "boko" in Hausa language means "western education" and "haram" in Arabic language means "forbidden things."

 

From April 14, 2009 to date, I have been in possession of twenty four editions of the voluminous nonsense Desert Herald weekly. In addition to the fact that the paper lacks truth in contents, its language of communication – English – is highly deficient and replete in grammar and construction. There are two central reasons that account for grammatical inadequacies that almost run on every page of the Desert Herald. These reasons are VAULTING AMBITION and the INCOMPETENCE of the Publisher doubling as Editor-in- Chief and some of his hired mercenaries, notable among them are Bala Mohammed Makosa, Ismail Mohammed and Israel Ohia. These three writers and their big boss, Tukur Mamu are murderers of English language and have been committing cardinal errors in journalism with impunity.

 

The Publisher and Editor-in-Chief is highly vicious and desperate to be seen as being notorious (not popular) to the extent that he does not care about what he dishes out as information and the language with which he conveys it, provided he feeds fat. We should not however apportion too much blame on the three mercenary writers of Tukur Mamu for their bad write ups and for having no time to proof read most of the consistent errors in the Desert Herald. This is because, it is often said that, he who pays the piper ultimately dictates the tune.

 

Having said all these, let's now bring out some of the language deficiencies as used in the "boko haram of the Nigerian newspapers"-the Desert Herald-, which none of its boko haram editors was competent to correct. "What did Gov. Ibrahim Geidam did with the N18 billion left by late Sen. Mamman Ali" as against "what did Gov. Ibrahim Geidam do." "The million dollar questions now on the lips of many people in Kaduna State and beyond" instead of "the questions now on the lips of…." (DH: Vol 1, No.37). "Success is achieved only through perseverance and hard work, for it is a journey through real difficult times" instead of "success is achieved only through perseverance and hard work because it is a journey through…" (This wrong expression appears every week in the Desert Herald as home advert).

 

"Last week, some national daily papers" instead of "Last week, some national dailies"(DH: Vol 1, No.32). "Desert Herald loss pioneer staff" instead of "Desert Herald losses Pioneer Staff" (front page of DH: Vol 1, No. 35). We also have such errors as "5 feared dead over fired sparked by hoarded in Kano", "Shehu Almajir Gusau is indeed an irreparable lost to Desert Herald", "I have to start to respond to Iyawa's write up. I have to tell him", "he seems to be at lost", "the traumatized masses whom Iyawa and his pay masters have represses", "Khalil have been yeaning about being a governor"

 

Writing about its Mission Statement, the Desert Herald stated thus, "In creating man and the world he was to dwell in, God almighty never had to consult anybody because no consultation was necessary." The correct statement should have been "In creating man and the world, the Almighty God never consulted anybody." The expression, "the world he was to dwell in" is ambiguous and therefore affects the meaning of the sentence. Likewise "almighty" is an adjective that qualifies God and God should not qualify almighty. "Never had to" cannot just go together. It is because no consultation was necessary for God that He never consulted any body. So, there is no need for tautology or unnecessary repetition.

 

Tragically too, here is a paragraph from one of the write ups of the so called Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Desert Herald. "The insinuation of the current strike action coupled with the absence of conducive conditions for learning means that government has contravene this social contract. For the fact that education is not free and parents and guardian pay mammoth and sometimes beyond the pale fees make the loss of Nigerian students immeasurable and a double jeopardy as money is not gotten for money paid for education."(Vol 3, No. 17) This statement is highly disjointed and poorly written. The better option should have been "The insinuation of the current strike action and the absence of good atmosphere for learning contravened the social contract. We know education is not free because parents pay huge sums beyond limit to see their children through education. It is therefore worrisome that the money paid as education fee by parents does not commensurate with the students' output." It seems the publisher and Editor-in-chief uses words that he does not know their meaning just to impress and confuse his readers. One is therefore at loss what he meant by "pale fee", "loss of Nigerian Students immeasurable, etc.  It should have been "government has contravened" and not just "contravene." He also stated at the back page of this volume that "Now coming to the crux of the subject matter of my column, I truly can not understand…" Mamu should have known that Subject is the same thing as Matter. He should have used either of the words. Cannot is one word and shouldn't have been separated. It is not "I truly can not understand" but "I cannot truly understand."

 

 

The case of Bala Mohammed Makosa is the worst of all the murderers of English in the Desert Herald. This man hardly makes a sentence without assassinating English language. In most cases, some elementary pupils are better than him in terms of sentence construction and vocabulary building. His editor should have lived up to his responsibility to either correct or advise him to go and start from the basic to avoid further embarrassment to the "boko haram of Nigerian newspapers."

 

 It is painful that a paper that ought to educate and inform readers could post such language deficient material on its website for the world to read. How can we re-brand Nigeria with these types of people in the media? The pain of the language inadequacies was however relieved on realizing that people do not care about Desert Herald and therefore, they do not read it in the first place. Some of these language deficiencies allowed in Bala Mohammed Makosa's piece in volume 3, No. 16 of the junk paper include expressions as the use of "must" instead of "should", "Kanosian" as in "Kanawa", "has emerged" in place of "had emerged", "people were in an abject poverty" instead of "people are in abject poverty".

 

We also have such errors as" Shari'ah was implemented" in place of "Shari'ah was launched", "There was no any positive change" instead of "there was no positive change", "the same thing in Zamfara State" instead of "similar thing in Zamfara State", "I have never seeing" in place of "I have never seen", "the weak persons instead of "the weak", "why must a person like Yarima who thinks himself holy" instead of "why should a person of Yarima who thinks he is holy", "sabotaging every move he made" instead of "every move he makes", "why Shekarau always prefer to" instead of "prefers to", "Kano film's makers" instead of "Kano Film Makers", "I observed that Rabo is only" instead of "I observed that Rabo was only" or "I observe that Rabo is only", and so on.

 

Generally, the problems with the writer of the above piece published in the Desert Herald are numerous and significant. He has the problem of tenses, modal verbs/auxiliaries, paragraphing, possessive, sentence construction, figure of speech, malapropism, etc. The errors pointed out so far are just small portion of the huge number of grammatical errors that are featured on weekly basis in the Desert Herald. The question one may ask is that, does one need to be a sycophant to point out these fundamental lapses? I am sure that the Editor-in-Chief of the Desert Herald has not forgotten the popular axiom that says" those who live in glass house should not throw stone."

 

From the above illustrations, one can see that most of the deficiencies in the Desert Herald are errors and not mistakes and therefore not pardonable. So, what moral justification has the publisher cum Editor –in-Chief, Tukur Mamu, to be fabricating and telling lies against men of integrity when he is not, in the first place, competent at all for the work he does? It may not be out of place to also observe that every headline that dots the Desert Herald is nothing but fictitious and make-belief of the Publisher in order to live fat by tarnishing the image and reputation of the north. As a paper that fabricates to sell, most of its lead stories can neither be substantiated nor proved in any competent court of law. All these shortcomings are what make any reasonable person to refer to Desert Herald as "the boko haram of Nigerian newspapers" and truly speaking, it is.

 

In conclusion, it is however not by coincidence that the Desert Herald does not attract sincere advert placement from the general public because it is a junk medium that should not be trusted as its voluminous nonsense publications can never have any positive effect on the progress of the north. Indeed, it is an uncommon paper with uncommon language and uncommon contents. Too bad!

 

Saka Raji Audu writes from Kano and can be reached on his email: sakaraj@yahoo.com