Folklore and Nationalism in Nigeria

Abstract

The paper discusses Folklore and Nationalism in Nigeria. The two operative words in our title are “folklore” and “nationalism”, both of which require brief definitions so that people may not infer what I do not mean from what I really mean. To begin with, folklore refers to the lore of the “folk” which can be any group of people bound together by some common factors such as languages, geographical locations, religion and thought systems. But in more specific terms, folklore refers to all forms of oral heritage like poetry, songs, proverbs, riddles and all the allied forms of the folktale. The essential nature of folklore, however, is that it is primarily transmitted by word of mouth, from one person to the other, and from one generation to the next. For most Africa, outside of the Arab speaking areas, folklore is the only means of recalling their past. It is not only their history, religion and material cultural that are thus preserved and transmitted, their philosophy, sciences, their medicine, their technology, even their leisure also similarly preserved and transmitted. If we, therefore, wish understand the African as he is today so that we can chart his future advancement, folklore is a very important source of knowledge that we must use. Next is ‘nationalism” which in the African context can be defined as a feeling of national consciousness, an awareness by people that they are members of a nation state and a desire for freedom from colonial rule’, (Crowder). But a nation is much more than a people speaking and writing in a common language. It is also a people who have a common past, and through that past, as through their language, a sense of cultural identity. It is a people who know who they know they have been, with a sense of having accomplished great things in common in the past, and nursing a desire to achieve them in the future.