African Multilingualism and the Politics of Literary Language Choice: Comparative Study of Nigerian Authors Who Write in Indigenous Languages

This study examines the politics of literary language choice among Nigerian authors who write primarily or substantially in indigenous languages rather than English, analysing the ideological motivations, practical challenges, and readership implications of this choice in the contemporary Nigerian literary landscape. The debate between writing in English and writing in African languages has been central to postcolonial African literary criticism since Ngugi wa Thiong'o's foundational arguments, but the specific situation of Nigerian-language literature, including work in Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Efik, and Tiv, has been underanalysed relative to the attention given to Anglophone Nigerian fiction. The study conducts in-depth interviews with ten Nigerian authors who write in indigenous languages, drawn from a range of geopolitical zones, and combines the interview data with comparative analysis of their published works and public literary statements. Interview analysis examines authors' stated motivations, experiences of publishing and distribution in indigenous languages, reader responses, and the relationship between their indigenous-language work and any English-language writing they also produce. Textual analysis examines the formal strategies these authors develop in crafting literary expression in languages with distinct oral literary traditions. Findings reveal that the primary motivations for indigenous-language writing are ideological commitment to mother-tongue literary development, the desire to reach non-English-literate community readers, and the creative freedom offered by writing in one's first language. Keywords: African multilingualism, indigenous language literature, literary language choice, Nigerian languages, postcolonial debate.