Nigerian Language Oral History Documentation Project/Evaluation Report 2021

Nigerian Language Oral History Documentation Project

Summary

What is the Nigerian Language Oral History Documentation Project? How did it start? What does the project bring to the movement?
Read this summary page for a description of the project, data highlights across three core outcome areas, and lessons learned across the project implementations.
Use the tabs in the navbar to find detailed sections that dive deeper into the data.

Project history

The short oral history of Iragbiji in Iragbiji language by Muraina Oyelena a.

A short oral history of Oke-agbe in Oke-agbe langauge by Mrs Tawakalitu Adefiba

Nigerian Language Oral History Documentation Project is an initiative by the Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation Inc. with support from the Wikimedia Foundation for enriching the Wikimedia projects with freely licensed audiovisual files documenting spoken languages and dialects in Nigeria.

Language is one of the core values of people and identity of any nation. More than 6,000 languages are spoken in the world and over 500 languages are spoken in Nigeria. This is approximately 8.3% of the total languages spoken worldwide. It's been established by the United Nation that in “every two weeks, at least one indigenous language vanishes, leading to two language extinctions each month”. Essentially, this is a problem facing small languages with little or no documentation. There are several indigenous languages in Nigeria that are neither taught in schools or written down. These endangered languages lack any tangible preservation, documentation and may soon vanished as predicted by the United Nation.

English is the official language spoken in Nigeria; however, there are over 520 languages and dialects in different parts of the country. The country is divided into 6 Geo-political zones; South-West, South-South, South-East, North Central, North West and North East, for administration. Essentially, there are three major languages spoken, written and taught in schools in Nigeria, while speakers of these languages are dominants in their respective zones e.g. South-West; Yoruba, South-East; Igbo, North-Central; Yoruba and Hausa; North-West; Hausa, North-East; Hausa.

In response to economic, political and social pressures, there is a paradigm shift from local dialects to more dominant languages such as English language.

To address this issue, the Wikimedia Nigeria Foundation Inc. with support from the Wikimedia Foundation, is recording audiovisual of oral history of languages spoken in Nigeria videos and audios. The documented materials are hosted on Wikimedia Commons, Wikitongues, the United States Library of Congress, and the Internet Archive hosted the materials in perpetuity.

The project was run for 4 months (May - August 2021) and involves traveling from community-to-community to collect the audiovisual recordings. The core organizing team includes Olaniyan Olushola, Isaac Olatunde, Mikaeel Sodiq, Dansu Peter, Daniel Bögre Udell, Tunde Oladimeji.

The production was managed by Tunde Oladimeji, a notable Nigerian documentary filmmaker, actor, director and television presenter, known for pioneering documentary film in indigenous language in Nigeria. The recording was done for about a month. The native speakers were carefully selected based on predetermine criteria by the project team. We worked with literate speakers who can provide a first-pass translation in a practical orthography which can form the basis for subtitle in English.

The oral histories were not scripted but elicited through structured conversations that encourage the speakers to use different grammatical tenses in their language and share culturally relevant knowledge. The elicitation protocol used was designed by the field linguists from Wikitongues and language experts. The audiovisuals was shot with a Black Magic 4K Camera in different locations with good ambient by Femi Fatola, a professional cinematographer who shot Ibadan documentary that was nominated in the best documentary category at the 2020 Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards.

Quality improvement

A total of 50 audiovisuals were produced
The audiovisuals were added to Wikipedia articles in more than 200 languages Wikipedia
At least 30 of the audiovisuals were subtitled into English language
The audiovisuals were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, U.S Library of Congress and the Internet Archive

Volunteers and existing users engagement

Over 80 volunteers were involved in the project implementation. This includes volunteers who featured in the audiovisuals production, the production crew, and Wikipedians
At least 10 experienced Wikipedians were involved in the project design and use of the audiovisuals collected on Wikipedia articles
At least 2 of the volunteers are language documentation experts
At least 1 WMF staffer plays an advisory roles

Replication and shared learning

95% of the volunteers reported that it was a good experience working on the project and would be glad to continue to work on the project
The project core team agrees to help new organizers implement the project in their respective countries

Lessons learned

Incentives in form of souvenirs for participants are good ways to attract casts for the audiovisuals.

Notes