Finally, the best authorities on the English language have decided to enrich it by yielding to some of the more creative and distinctive locutions that have emerged from Nigeria over the decades and will no doubt continue to emerge.

In its latest update, the Oxford English Dictionary catalogues a number of Nigerian English words make it into the dictionary for the first time, most of them borrowings from Nigerian languages, or unique Nigerian coinages that entered English in the 1970s and 1980s.

This development is liberating. One can now use terms such as buka, or its more gentrified form bukateria without having to explain their meaning to the uninitiated, or even mama put, which at first blush seems incomplete, an expression arrested mid-way. Mama put what? But its apparent incompleteness, I suspect, is what really distinguishes it.

I suspect that it originated from the average Nigerian’s disdain for standard measures. The food vendor (mama) dishes out food worth in her judgment the exact amount the buyer has indicated, but the buyer will have none of it. So, the buyer implores the vendor, mama to put more, (shades of Oliver Twist) for the same price. From this, it was but a short step to mama put as entreaty and destination.

Danfo makes the cut as a no-frills form of urban transportation; mass transit without the mass. Perhaps much more than the defunct Okada Airline whose rutted remains now lie on the fringes of many airports in Nigeria, much more than its proprietor Gabriel Exemption Igbinedion and probably at least as much the university the named for himself, okada will now resonate across the English-speaking world as a motorbike taxi.

Let us face it: gubernatorial, of or pertaining to governors, is an ugly word. It is also not a word for headlines, where short but bracing terms count for the most. So Nigerians clipped it to guber. Now everyone understands what it means.

Agric has been with us for a long term as an abbreviation for agriculture, hence School of Agric, or BSc (Agric). As in agric chicken, however, it is now used pejoratively to denote the brittle, commercially reared chicken, in contrast to the much tastier and probably more nutritious ‘native’ or traditionally reared) chicken.

I used to think that K-leg, was a wholly Nigerian locution for a condition in which a person’s knees turn inward, resembling the letter K. Its history, I gather, goes back to 1842. But its usage to denote a problem, setback, obstacle, or impediment, has been overwhelmingly Nigerian.

I searched in vain for bow-leg, a condition in which the legs bend outwards, like a bow. When I was growing up, the thinking was that you had to have bow legs to become a fine footballer, like the great Stanley Matthews and many of our contemporaries who excelled in the beautiful game. And so, we walked on the edges of our feet, hoping to induce our legs to bend outwards.

It never worked.

Purists often frowned upon the use of next tomorrow to designate the day after tomorrow as an especially coarse indication of a poor education, if not outright illiteracy. Now it is legit. Eat your heart out, all ye stuffy purists.

I was pleased to see Kannywood there, depicting the Hausa-language film industry based in Kano. I hope Nollywood, the much larger English-language move industry, has won recognition, too. No surprises at the legitimation sef for self nor with chop, which has long stood for food or eating,

A young man who thought I should know much better once queried my using the terms “barbing” and “put to bed” on this page. They had sneaked in at time of diminishing returns. I admitted my error, and he and I became good friends. Now the venerable Oxford English Dictionary says the usage is permissible.

When a Nigerian speaks of qualitative education, he or she will be understood to be speaking of education of very high quality, rather than about the quantitative variety. And when he or she has a gist for you, or has been gisting with another person, it means he or she has some rumor, gossip, or intelligence for you, or has been sharing same with another

I must say I was disappointed not to find the popular uniquely Nigerian locutions on ground and not on ground in the OED update. To say the former of a candidate for political office is to say that he or she has good prospects. To say the latter is to pronounce the candidate politically dead.

Maybe these terms will appear in the next update, as well as “majorly,” meaning “for the most part,” and others the attentive audience are sure to bring up.

Of chutzpah and irony

You will have heard the perhaps apocryphal story of young man who killed his parents and at his trial asked the judge to show mercy because he was an orphan.

That trope is the classic example of what is called chutzpah (hootspah) in the Yiddish. It means overweening impudence, unexampled temerity, in-your-face brazenness, outrageous effrontery, presumption of the most brazen kind, and like conduct.

I was reminded of that term and conduct bordering on it the other By Orji Uzor Kalu, who used to be the executive governor of Abia State and until recently the Majority Whip in the Senate as well as the Senator representing Abia Central in that body.

In the former office, he was presumed Excellent; in the latter, he was deemed Distinguished. The titles came with the territory. He was nothing of the sort, of course, but he was never in the least embarrassed by the titles. Instead of striving to earn them, he disgraced and betrayed them through and through.

For each of the eight years he spent in the Executive Mansion, he virtually carted home Abia State’s statutory appropriation from the Federal Exchequer and turned it into his personal portfolio of assets without the least regard for the consequences.

Drawing on his mastery of stunt and subterfuge, he evaded justice for almost a decade. But the law finally caught up with him, and he was sentenced to 12-year term in jail — beg your pardon, in a correctional facility.

It was from there that he filed for release the other day, on the ground that, for every day he was kept there, the good and deserving people of Abia would be denied effective representation in the Senate and a voice in the governance of Nigeria, contrary to the Constitution’s express stipulation that all States shall be treated equally.

The same Abia State he had sucked dry year after year without remorse or twinge of conscience. The same Abia he had pillaged to build a personal business empire.

And now, irony in the United States, where race colours everything and reflected daily in the lived experience of black people, making their very existence fraught. This condition is amply reflected in their language.

Driving while black. Shopping while black. Dining out while black. Teaching while black. Walking the streets while black. Being ambitious while black. Stepping out of line while being black, and so on and so forth. Sometimes, just being black can create difficulties.

Banking while black is one of the oldest constraints that black people live with the States, was shown dramatically on the floor of a bank the other day.

A black had gone went to his bank to deposit a substantial sum of money won in a wrongful-dismissal lawsuit against his employers, whom he had accused of racial bias and do some transactions based on the cheques.

A bank official took a look at the cheques and immediately radioed the police, who stormed the banking hall in a patrol vehicle, with another as back-up. They were heavily armed.

The bank’s officials said they suspected forgery and fraudulent intent. It is doubtful whether they would have harboured such suspicions if the client was white.

And now, irony of ironies, the black man who was trying to deposit the money he won for termination of appointment on racial grounds has served notice that he is going to file a lawsuit against the bank that worked an embarrassing racial fuss over his own money.

Prof. Olatunji Dare