i have been osberving arabic writing on our nigeria currency, i asked many people but no geniune answer, pls i need geniune answer.

4 people like you way no sabi english

Is the national assembly not built like a central mosque too. Me think some forces are trying hard to portray us as a muslim state. But its been unsuccessful.

Examines the sociolinguistics of Arabic as a perceived foreign language in Nigeria

It observes that literary Arabic is the oldest non-native language in Nigeria and the entire West African sub-region and that it got to Nigeria through trade, commerce and intellectual link between Nigeria and the Arabic-speaking world. Arabic had functioned as a language of social contact in Nigeria long before the founding and coming of Islam to West Africa. It is observed that although Arabic has a distinguished position in the history of Nigeria, as a language, its association with Islam (Arabic’s strongest peg), makes Arabic a language for Muslims only, and that this situation of being a Muslims’ only language does not promote its state and status in a multilingual Nigeria.

To avert the problem of stagnation of Arabic in Nigeria, the paper observes that outside formal Islamic setting education is a tool that holds an objective potential to enhance its growth and development in Nigeria.

The paper believes that the classroom is one possible avenue where the mutual misconceptions and suspicion among Arabic loyalists or adherents in Nigeria and non-Arabic adherents’ may be objectively addressed.

The paper, therefore, concludes by proposing the opening up of Arabic language to all who are interested in learning it as a language. This way, the objective of the Federal Government of Nigeria to use education as a tool of development of language in Nigeria will be better realized

derives from a personal reaction to four inaugural lectures on various aspects of Arabic in Nigeria. Three of these were delivered by faculty members of the University of Ilorin1. S.H.A Malik had earlier delivered the fourth at the University of Ibadan.2 Three of these inaugural lectures treated basically the same theme and subject matter - the history, role, status and fortunes of Arabic throughout the world and its fortunes in Nigeria.3 The fourth, by Z.I Oseni, focused on the literary and scholarly use of Arabic by Nigerian Arabic scholars4. S.H.A. Malik, and R.A. Raji were generally unanimous on the following:
• That in spite of the long standing national and world history of Arabic, it has not made the sort of impact expected of it in Nigeria.

• That in Nigeria, Arabic is a disadvantaged language in spite of its immense historical, political and socio-cultural relevance.

• That in addition to social evolutions and processes, official government neglect has been largely responsible for the disadvantaged position of Arabic in Nigeria, especially, if it is compared with English and French, two non-native languages which are substantially better placed than Arabic.

• That if care was not taken to rescue Arabic from what could be summed up as the human factor, i.e., official hypocrisy, mutual suspicion and so on, Arabic runs the risk of being tagged an endangered language in Nigeria.

• That such human factor as mutual suspicion among Nigerians on the role and status of Arabic in Nigeria has not been helpful in making Arabic popular outside Islamic circles5.


Although the four lectures form the focus and reference for this paper, the paper per se does not amount to a critique of them. Rather, they have formed the impetus that gingered this writer to examine the sociolinguistic setting of Arabic in Nigeria in order to understand why Arabic is what it is in Nigeria.

One difficulty of Arabic in Nigeria, for example, is the intricate relationship between it and Islam such that one cannot fully mention Arabic without reference to Islam:

“The Arabic language is very explicitly Islam because it is the language in which Islam was revealed by Allah to the prophet Mohammed”6 and so, functionally, Arabic and Islam are inseparable. They mutually rub each other into the life of the practitioner of Islam because Arabic is made to service Islam and all that is connected with it.7 Therefore, in this paper reference will be made to Islam only as it relates to Arabic as a language, Arabic as the language of the Qur‘an and Arabic as the vehicle for expressing Islamic religion.

Arabic is an international language and the 10th most important internationally.8 It is a Semito–Hamitic Afro-Asiatic language spoken by over 150 million people9. Arabic is spoken as a first language in at least seven states of the Middle East and the Gulf States.

It accounts for about 25% of Africa’s population.10 As an international language, Arabic is spoken in North Africa, the Maghrib (Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria), Central and East Africa and the Northern stretch of West Africa. Arabic is spoken in all countries that practise Islam as a state religion. For this reason, Arabic is common in Spain, Turkey, Eastern Europe, the Old Soviet Union Including the present Russia, the Pacific Islands, (particular the Philippines and Malaysia), India, China and the Far East.11
At the contemporary level, Arabic is socio-politically on the sprawl across international borders. The spate of spread and importance of Arabic, for example, is evident in the very frequent use of Arabic on the electronic media by the BBC, the Voice of America, and the Voice of Nigeria.

The Dutch, French, German and Russian national radio stations continually air Arabic versions of their programmes regularly over their network. Besides, al-jazirah, (High Arabic version of CNN’s programme), beamed to the Arabic speaking world, is a measure of international recognition Arabic is receiving across the world.12 The numerous all- Arabic satellite transmitting stations beaming programmes to the world give credence to the continuous rise of Arabic internationally.13 Currently, Arabic is being used as one of the languages at the United Nations (UN) and at such other regional groupings as the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Arabic is constantly attracting world attention. The political state of the Middle East at the moment has made the Arab world (and by extension Arabic) receive more international attention than ever before. Currently, Arabic is causing ripples across the world, especially, in the United States of America, as a language of ideological, political and economic resistance.

Following the September 11th 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the US government placed Arabic in the rank of languages to be studied for strategic reasons.

Arabic language predated historical Islam. The significance of Arabic as a language derived from the fact that the Qur‘an was espoused in it and in a grandeur that surpassed colloquial Arabic. Arabic is universally known as the language of the Qur‘an and of Islamic liturgy.

For example, as the language of the Qur‘an, it is the final authority on Islamic matters.13 On pilgrimage, all Muslims are required to make all declarations in Arabic.14 All Muslims, during their prayers, must recite portions of the Qur‘an in its original Arabic, no matter their native tongue.15 Translation that is so vital in foreign language teaching and learning “cannot be of much use in a first-hand study of Islamic faith. Any serious student of Islamic religion must learn Arabic”16 ostensibly because the Qur‘an is untranslatable, inimitable, and therefore, inadmissible by Qur‘an standard.17 Arabic serves as a language of liturgy for over 400,000,000 people.18

Arabic is a very flexible and adaptable language because of its high capacity for socialization and absorption of host languages. In the words of A. S. Kaye: “As Islam expanded from Arabia, the Arabic language exerted much influence on the native languages with which it came into contact.19

Arabic is the most international of the Hamito-Semitic language family. Its pre-Islam spread outside the Middle East was partly as a result of trade and commerce with the world outside the Middle East while its post-Islam expansion was attributed to Islamic military campaigns as well as trade and commerce.

Its post-Islamic spread as a language and culture was enhanced by the expansion of the Islamic faith. As Islam spread, it did so using Arabic as the medium for expressing the Islamic religion, its practices and its concepts. Whenever a territory was conquered, Arabic was invariably imposed as the official language and as a medium for expressing Islam, the language of the Qur‘an and its culture. According to A.

Abubak’re, the dynasties of the Umayyad and Abbasid Empires contributed immensely to the rise of Arabic as the official language of the Islamic religion, business and administration. This way, Arabic was able to gain linguistic pre-eminence over conquered territories.20 As A.S. Kaye noted:

As Islam expanded from Arabia, the Arabic language exerted much influence on the native languages with which it came in contact . . . Persians, Iranians, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshians and many speakers of African languages such as Hausa, and Swahili used the Arabic script to write their own native languages and assimilated a large number of Arabic loan words. One did need have to be a Muslim to embrace Arabic. Words of ultimate Arabic origin have penetrated internationally and interlingually.21

It is evident from the above quotation that Arabic influence over local languages usually became profound because Arabic was used as the language of literacy: “local languages used Arabic script to write their own native languages and thereby assimilated a tremendous number of Arabic loan words.”22

Arabic ranks as the language that has the most influence on African languages, especially, Swahili, Hausa Wolof, Fula and Yoruba. In addition to these major African languages, there are in Nigeria, such other languages as Nupe, Ebira, Igala and Yekhee that have a large chunk of Arabic lexical items.

Swahili, the East African Bantu language, is known to have a history of early association with Arabic through commercial interaction and affiliation with the Bantu peoples of East Africa and the Southern Asian communities stretching between Arabia and China. As a result of this association, Arabic culture and language got initially established on the coastlands of East Africa. Later, as the contact and interaction increased, Swahili

gradually penetrated into the interior of East Africa. The word Swahili is said to have been derived from the Arabic expression: Sawa hil which means coasts.24 Literacy in Swahili, expressed in a modified form of Arabic script, had existed for at least a thousand years before the coming of Europeans to East Africa.25 The naturally simple and similar patterns of Swahili dialects made it possible for Swahili to accommodate a stock of Arabic lexicon and vocabulary at the ad stratum level. Swahili lexicon, therefore, shows massive borrowing from Arabic. Bantu words of Arabic origin tend to retain their Arabic pronunciation pattern.

The most outstanding result of the Arabic connection with Bantu has been the evolution of Kiswahili, a Swahili dialect that was initially confined to the East African coastland.

Later, as commercial activities extended into the hinterlands, Arabic influence and Kiswahili also spread with it. When Kenya and Tanzania decided to adopt Swahili as their national language, they were choosing a language that had had a record of over fifteen centuries of literacy and a large stock of Arabic vocabulary and lexical items.25

For the purpose of continuous development and lexical enrichment of Swahili, Kenya and Tanzania naturally looked upon Arabic. For example, in her effort to adopt Swahili as the official national language, Tanzania borrowed and adapted a lot of Arabic technical terms, which were “Swahilized in their phonological form.”26

Arabic is the oldest non-native language in the West Africa sub-region. It predated Islam.

Everything that is known of the early pre-colonial West African history, especially of the empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai, came to us in the writings of Ibn Battuta, the famous Arabic history scholar. Also, the records of the famous Sokoto Caliphate were kept in Arabic script.27

^^
so finally,what is d meaning of d arabic writing?

Who da hell is this Emyah? If Arabic is part of the Nigerian languages, then so is latin. It is a form of calling service for muslims and that is where it ends. Kind of like praying in Latin in catholic churches. Arabic is not our language or part of Nigerian culture. Deal with it.

The mode of entry of Arabic into West Africa is one point that affected its status and stature in West Africa. As it was the case with the pre-Islamic spread of Arabic, Arabic language came to the West African sub-region as a language of trade, commerce, literacy and social interaction – literacy and interpersonal communication. Unlike Western languages, it did not come as an imperial language. In spite of this humble entry, however, it exerted a quiet but strong and vigorous social effect on the native populations of West Africa.

For example, at the social cultural level, Arabic had existed as a language of literacy and documentation in West Africa centuries before the coming of colonial administration.28 It is important to stress the point that because

Arabic did not come to the West African sub-region as a military or colonizing language, it was never able to exert any serious political influence in spite of its huge capability to absorb or assimilate host languages and exert lasting impact on the socio-cultural setting of the society of the host languages. The only exception to this (as we will see below), was in the Northern parts of Nigeria where, as a result of the Sokoto Jihad, Arabic became entrenched in the life of the people.


Among the many legacies of Arabic in West Africa are the Islamic religion and literacy, particularly, in the area of the codification in Arabic of pre-colonial West African history and literacy skills - epistolography, translation, Arabic drama and theatre.29

Arabic is older than any European language in West Africa. The relative influence of Arabic and European languages on the life of the West African sub- region is a reflection of the way the languages were introduced into West African.

English, French, German and Portuguese came to West Africa as languages of political domination while Arabic came as a socializing language without any kind of fiat about it.

Arabic, therefore, had no opportunity to superimpose itself as a dominant language over host languages of West Africa the way the European languages did. Therefore, although Arabic is common in both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa, it has no political influence comparable to what English and French have in West Africa

Although Arabic is best perceived as a foreign language in Nigeria, the Shuwa Arabs of Borno State speak a dialect of it as a native language. Elsewhere in Nigeria, Arabic is spoken as a foreign language.30 Generally, the influence of Arabic over Nigeria may be found in two major geo-political zones – the South-Western zone and the political Northern parts of Nigeria. In these zones, the infinite capacity of Arabic to accommodate and be accommodated is

evident in the huge Arabic words that there are in Hausa, Fulfulde and Yoruba.30 Yoruba has borrowed a lot from Arabic in the area of religion, ethics, qualities and effects, and so on.31 In the Northern and the South West parts of Nigeria, there exist numerous Arabic schools and institution where Arabic is taught to Nigerian Muslims:
Centres for the study of Arabic language abound in several parts of the country. Wherever there is a Muslim population, some kind of Qur’anic school is established where both Arabic and Islam are taught simultaneously. This makes Arabic a natural second language for a Muslim.32

This arrangement makes Arabic a socio-cultural and class-specific language which caters for the needs of Muslims only.

Among the Yorubas and much of the South-Western part of the country, Arabic had been entrenched as a literacy culture long before the arrival of western education and Christian evangelism.33 The degree of entrenchment of Arabic may be seen in the fact that records of pre-colonial judicial proceedings in the Royal Courts of the Timi of Ede were kept in Arabic.34 Also, the Reverend Bishop (Dr.) Samuel Ajayi Crowther of the Church Missionary Society was said to have contemplated translating the Holy Bible into Yoruba, using Arabic alphabet. He equally contemplated preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in Yoruba, through the distribution of Christian tracts written in Arabic.35
Arabic literacy was so firmly entrenched in the core Yoruba-speaking areas of the old Western Region of Nigeria that when the free primary school scheme was implemented in the old Western Region of Nigeria in 1955, the Region had difficulty getting Muslim children of the Region to take up their place in the Western-style primary school system provided by the government.35 Today, as it is with Hausa, Yoruba is inundated with Arabic and expressions that are commonly applied in speech and proverbs.36
Arabic in Northern Nigeria –the Hausa Example
One major feature of Arabic in the South-West is the fact that it is individuals who commit time and money to the promotion of Arabic and the culture it represents. In the North, all governments from the Lord Fredrick Lugard of the colonial times to date have been directly involved in the promotion and entrenchment of Arabic and its associated culture. In the South- Western part of Nigeria where there was nothing else to the “friendly” entry of Arabic, the strong hold of Arabic has been in the area of social interaction-religion and Islamic literacy. Though this in itself is considerable, Arabic has not attracted active and direct government involvement as the case is in the Northern parts of the country.
The prevalence of Arabic in Northern Nigeria results from its association with Islam. The military conquest of the North through the Uthman Dan Fodio Jihad in the 19th century enhanced its pre-eminence as a language. When, after the Jihad, the Sokoto Caliphate took off and Arabic was introduced as a medium of spiritual and intellectual communication, the Caliphate had a lot of Arabic tradition in the form of literacy, linguistics and socio-cultural tradition on build upon.37
The Sokoto Caliphate represents an example of the role of military victory in the promotion of Arabic language and its cultural influence on the language or languages of conquered territories. The role of the Sokoto Caliphate can be compared to that of the

Umayyad and Abbasid Empires in the promotion of Arabic language and culture over territories they conquered.
Today, Hausa has been greatly influenced by Arabic and its influence extends as far as where Arabic is spoken. The enormous capacity of Hausa to accommodate and absorb new words from languages it comes in contact with made it easily able to accommodate Arabic and other languages. Thus, Hausa managed to stand out prominently from the languages of the locality. It has a rich vocabulary, a lot of which derived from Arabic which is used as a lingua franca over a vast area of Northern Nigeria. Arabic may be seen as Hausa’s greatest source of growth:
The major influence has been from Arabic . . . In certain semantic spheres, e.g., religion (particularly Islam), government, law, warfare, horsemanship, literature and mathematics, Hausa is literally swamped with words of Arabic origin. Interestingly, Hausa has had no difficulty in integrating these Arabic words into its own morphology system of nouns, or verbal inflections . . . There is a move from Hausa intellectuals to turn to Arabic for modern scientific and educational purposes.52

Arabic has a very special place in the history of Nigeria because it is tied to Nigeria’s history in several ways:
• By way of trade and commerce through the great trans-Saharan trade routes that linked Nigeria to North Africa where Arabic is spoken as a first language.

• By way of religion through the Uthman Dan Fodio Jihad of 19th century and the Sokoto Caliphate.

• Through literary and intellectual endeavours between Northern Nigeria and Egypt through the Kanem-Borno Empire with Maiduguri as centre.

• And at the socio-cultural level, through the Islamic religion, mode of dressing, literacy and personal names.

Thus, through these major ways, Arabic has contributed immensely to shaping the sociolinguistic setting of Nigeria. Long before what became known as Nigeria was given form and shape by the British colonial power, Arabic, patronized by Muslims had been established as a regional language connecting various linguistic communities in Nigeria.

Arabic was the lingua franca of the learned throughout Muslim West Africa and was used (much as English is being used today) as a bridge across the communities of Taureg, Kanuri Hausa, Fulani, Nupe or Yoruba on the West African sub region.39

The general socio-cultural outlook of the Northern parts of Nigeria is Arabic cushioned on the Islamic culture it expresses. The Fulani Jihad of the 19th century with the Sokoto Caliphate that emerged thereafter was the mainstay of Arabic, which has now become a second nature to the Muslim population of Northern Nigeria.
The Islamic religion and scholastic character of Sokoto Caliphate ensured that Arabic was the language of State and household scholarship.40 There is, therefore, no gainsaying in the fact that long before the colonial administration, Arabic had given the north a cohesive administration united in Arabic and Islam. By the time the British got to the North, the people’s level of literacy in Arabic and the Islamic judicial system was such that Lord Fredrick Lugard

decided not to tamper with the set up. He did this by using the policy of indirect rule to perpetrate Arabic and the culture it represented. As observed by Ali Mazrui, the famous international East African Muslim scholar: “institutionally indirect rule was a commitment to try to utilize native institutions in the task of governing the colonies” while culturally, “it constituted a reluctance to temper too radically with the belief system as well as the political institutions of subject peoples.”41. Mazrui is quick to add, however, that indirect rule, for a long time,

almost shut off the North from Christian missionary and Western influence, particularly, education.
At the official and socio-cultural levels, all governments of Northern Nigeria and individuals from the Lugard era to date have committed time, money and efforts to promoting and sustaining numerous government owned Arabic and Islamic institutions at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels across Northern Nigeria

Given this kind of background and influence, Nigerian Arabic scholars had expected that because of its role and socio-cultural importance, Arabic in Nigeria should have had a firmer stand than it currently has and that by now, it ought to have attracted an official patronage from the Federal Government of Nigeria beyond its recognition on the curriculum as an elective foreign language. That this, however, is not the case, worries Arabic academics. The worry is heightened because French that arrived Nigeria 650 years after Arabic has been elevated to a second official language status.42
Part of the difficulty facing Arabic in Nigeria today is the lack of understanding of its role, even among Nigerian academics some of who do not see the importance of Arabic ‘beyond Muslim prayers.’43 While the concern expressed by eminent Nigerian Arabic scholars in Nigeria, may be a reflection of the socio-political thinking in Islamic circles in Nigeria, a country where religion and language have always been potent political weapons,43 it may reflect as well, the socio-political phobia among some Arabic elites outside Nigeria’s academia.
Summary and Conclusion
From this sociolinguistic survey of Arabic in Nigeria, it has been established that Arabic is a world language whose expansion was principally through trade, commerce and social interaction and successful post-Islamic military campaigns. The huge capacity of Arabic to accommodate other languages was noted as its greatest asset and that wherever Arabic went, it had tremendous capacity to influence local languages as seen in Africa’s major languages of Hausa, Swahili, Fula, Wolof and Yoruba.

It was also established that because Arabic is, through Islam, a Muslims-only language, it is a language that has generally been kept away from non-Muslim Nigerians and that it will take the force of education to make it available to all Nigerians.


The practice of language teaching in Nigeria has shown that the Federal Government of Nigeria depends on education as a tool to objectively promote language teaching and development.

Today, with the large percentage of Muslims in Nigeria, the role of Arabic in international affairs, the entanglement of language, ethnicity and religion in Nigeria, Arabic language cannot be said to be endangered. In fact, it could be said to be doing very well, especially, in matters of Arabic literacy and intellectual pursuit.

1. The three inaugural lectures are by the following Arabic scholars at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ilorin: Z. I. Oseni. Prose and Drama in Nigerian Literature in Arabic: The Journey so Far. 53rd University of Ilorin Inaugural Lecture. University of Ilorin Publication Committee: Ilorin, 2002. R. A. Raji. Tangled Complexities: Muslim- Christian Relations and the Issues of Arabic Language in Nigeria. 54th University of Ilorin Inaugural Lecture. University of Ilorin Publication Committee: Ilorin, 2002 and A. Abubak’re. The Survival of Arabic in Difficult Terrains. 55th University of Ilorin Inaugural Lecture. University of Ilorin Publication Committee: Ilorin, 2002.

2. S. H.A. Malik. Arabic, the Muslim Prayer and Beyond. An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at the University of Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press,1999.
3. The three authors as cited 1 above.
4. Z. I. Oseni.
5. S. H.A. Malik and R. A. Raji.
6. Ali Mazrui. “Islam and the English Language in East and West Africa.” In W. H. Whitely. (Ed). Language Use and Social change: the problem of Multilingualism with Special Reference to Eastern Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Pres, p. 186.
7. R. A. Raji.
8. Ali Mazrui.
9. Ibid.
10. D. Wilkins. Linguistic in Language Teaching. London: Longman. 1972, p. 134. See also A. S. Kaye. “Arabic.” In Bernard Comrie, (ed). The World’s Major Languages. London: Routeledge, 1991.
11. William Potter. Language in the Modern World. Harmondsworth: Penguin and Robert Hertzon. “Semitic Languages.” In Bernard Comrie.
12. A. Abubak’re.
13. R. A. Raji.
14. S. H. A. Malik.
15. R. A. Raji.
16. Ibid.
17. Ali Mazrui.
18. A. G. A. S. Oladosu. “A Study of Errors in the Written Arabic of Yoruba and Hausa Speaking Students”. A Ph.D. thesis, University of Ilorin, 1988.
19. A. S. Kaye. 664-685.
20. A. Abubak’re.
21. A. S. Kaye.
22. Ibid.
23. Benji Wald. “Swahili and Bantu Languages.” In Bernard Comrie. p. 595.
24. Ibid.
25. L. Harry. “The Nationalization of Swahili in Kenya.” Language and Society. Vol.V. (No. 2), 1976, pp.153-164.
26. M. H. Abdulziz. “Tanzania’s National language Policy and the Swahili Political Culture.”In W.H. Whiteley.
27. S.H. A. Malik
28. S. H. A. Malik, R. A. Raji and A. Abubak’re.
29. Z. I. Oseni.
30. K. Hansford and Hansford. A Provisional Map of Nigeria. Savanna, Vol. V. (No 2), 1976. 115-
31. I. Ogunbiyi. Arabic Loan Words in the Yoruba Language. Arabic Journal of Language Studies. Vol. 3 (No. 1). 1984, 161- 180
32. A. G. A. S. Oladosu.
33. S. H. A. Malik. and R. A. Raji.
34. S. Johnson. The History of the Yorubas from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate. Lagos and S. H. A. Malik.

35. S. H. A. Malik.
36. S. H. A. Malik, Z I. Oseni, R. A. Raji and R. Abubak’re.
37. S. H. A. Malik.
38. A. S. Kaye.
39. S. H. A. Malik.
40. Ibid.
41. Ali Mazrui.
42. S. H. A. Malik.
43. Ibid.
44. B. Oladeji, “Buhari’s Ambition Suffers a Setback.” Saturday Tribune, Saturday 25th 2003.
45. S. H. A. Malik. and R. A. Malik. Indeed, Abubakar in al –Thaqafat al ’ Arabiyyah fi Naijiriya. Beirut, Abdul Bassat, has, for example, a collection of about 1,500 Arabic loan words across Hausa and Fulfulde.

daylae:

Is the national assembly not built like a central mosque too. Me think some forces are trying hard to portray us as a muslim state. But its been unsuccessful.

I guess you've not seen the American Pentagon before !!!

TewMuch:

Who da hell is this Emyah?

Another annoying Virus unleashed on Nairaland - reminds me of Becomrich at his very worst! God save us!


So pls does anyone know what those signs really mean?

wesley80:

Another annoying Virus unleashed on Nairaland - reminds me of Becomrich at his very worst! God save us!


So pls does anyone know what those signs really mean?

becomerich the wack-map-loving-bad-english-typing nairaland poster

The second coming of becomrich !

@EMYAH i dont think i open this topic for you to wash your cooked mind here, pls find another place or alternatively open you own topic, Hah! please if you know you cant contribute meaningfully pls say nothing.

pls we need answer to the question.

@emyah

U s*ck!!! why spam an interesting thread. You are making following discuss on this thread difficult.

It means the value of the respective note. One hundred naira for example.

It means:

1. We had two colonial Masters
English Empire and Arabic Empire.


2. We have two people who amalgamated Nigeria
Lord Luggard and Usman Dan Fodio


3. We have two National Languages
English language and Arabic language.

4. It means we have two kinds of militants
MEND and Boko Haram.

Can you people not answer a simple question. Very disgusting replies.

Emmyah,

Thanks for that historical input. God Bless you!

@topic,

The value of the naira note denomination in Hausa language but written in Arabic.

For instance, N10 in Hausa is naira goma. So naira goma is written in Arabic.

Somebody is going to ask why. I say read emmyah's post the answer is in there.

Well Done Emyah! silly people cant even see anything in what you've referenced and how its related to the use of arabic in nigeria

I guess the cant find the answer they want