My Last Message To Sheikh Hamza Lawal, by Nasir Hashim

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by Nasir Hashim,

Throughout the process of writing the article entitled : “Sheikh Hamza Lawal: The controversial linguist of all times, ” I had it lingered in my mind that I was writing to a man whose approach in the field of academia was not less than a portrayal of practical epistemology. Again, I duly considered what I perceived as your psychology towards humanity and knowledge. My mind was free from emotion, bias and hatred; thus profundity and width of your knowledge were also put under consideration. I must express that your analysis and comment on my article fell short of expectations. My expectation was actually that you would give the article a just and fitting analysis by using at least one of the following approaches:

1. Formalism
2. Historicism
3. New historicism
4. New criticism
5. Structuralism
6. Post structuralism
7. Psychoanalysis
8. American pragmatics
9. Marxism
10. Cultural studies
11. Modernism
12. Post modernism
13. Darwin lit. studies
14. Queer theory
15. Reader-response theory
16. Hermeneutics

I wouldn’t have written the article if I knew you would do the following:

1. answer my invitation into the field of pragmatics
2. expatiate the qualities of a good public speaker
3. duly analyze my four{4}examples of metaphor including the interpretation under each
4. differentiate idiomatic from figurative expressions
5. establish the similarity between proverb and adage
6. highlight the difference between formal and informal language e.g.
7. between spoken and written language
8. between slang and formal speech

• between colloquialism and formal speech

1. between jargon and formal speech
2. trace any evidence of aporia and chasms in my text
3. expose logical fallacy in the text
4. deny the fact that the controversial expression by El-Rufai was not as I said, “it was a metaphor”
5. Prove that my write up is syntactically wrong.

I did not expect you to choose two points and give them interpretation at surface without considering any of the above theories of analysis. “Methinks thou art a scholar”

If you run away from the all above, how can you expect me to understand what you mean by “Batsaltshale” How I can accept that my article is “intellectually hollow, empty, and bankrupt. It is an academic disaster written by a dangerously adventurous upstart obsessed by misguided ambitions”

I learned that you have given an assignment to members of IMN, i.e. to find the meaning of: “out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, A poor player that straits and fret his hour upon the stage, and then it’s heard no more. I t is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” I want to assure you that this assignment was already done ten years ago. In fact, my students within and outside Nigeria did lots of assignments on not only Macbeth, but also on:

1. Twelfth Night
2. The Tempest
3. Othello
4. Hamlet
5. Romeo and Juliet
6. Antony and Cleopatra
7. Merchant of Venice
8. As you like it

They will also in due time, have more assignments on:

1. Winter’s Tale
2. Taming of the Shrew
3. Much ado about Nothing
4. Richard I ,II, and III
5. Henry I, II, III ,and IV
6. Merry wives of Windsor
7. Comedy of Errors
8. Mid-Summer Nights Dreams etc.

I wish at this juncture to acknowledge and appreciate the time you spent to find two grammatical errors in my article.

1. I often find myself in a state of bewilderment, perplexity, introspection, and sometimes I appeared to exhibit sometime of interior monologue. You are right; “ed” must not be there because the sentence begins with simple present tense and so must end with it. I taught my students this rule under the topic: The sequence of tenses”

I wish you know that this error is not in my manuscript-something went wrong in the process of typing. It was made by human typist; should I ridicule or invite the wrath of God upon him?

2. What kind of being sheikh Hamza Lawal is? Here again, there is wrong placement of auxiliary verb “is”. Even my students can easily detect this mistake in the short run of teaching them Types of Question and Classifications of Interrogative Statement.

As matter of fact, apart from those two errors, I personally discovered five (5) more after the article had been posted on many social net-works. Thank you anyway! However, as a human being, I, Nasir Hashim don’t feel proud to be corrected. In my perspective, even Nasir El- Rufai wouldn’t have been reprimanded if he did not feel arrogant to accept his mistake as human being. You wouldn’t have been attacked either.

Finally, I wish to enter my sincere plea by saying please, count Sheikh El-Zakzaky out of your dilemma. At least he has never accused you of anything, neither has he made you a subject of mockery or taunting. He never told the public that he sent you to Iran for further studies. He never told the public that you sometimes used his car for your personal life. Your argument is between you and some members of IMN like me who have no space within its hierarchy. Methinks thou art a Marabout! Therefore preferably, I advise you to consider “The Traditional Doctrine of Preponderance of Marabouts” and stay on the fence to watch members of Athaqalain Foundation and those of IMN to write and counter write.

While I wish you a happy Sallah in arrears, I hope this time around you would respond to my article by writing in English free from “lexico- syntactico-morphological” errors – not orally in Hausa.

Best Regards

Nasir Hashim