ABU, English Scholars Hold 41st Annual Conference and Diamond JubileeABU, English Scholars Hold 41st Annual Conference and Diamond Jubilee

The English Scholars' Association of Nigeria, ESAN, in collaboration with the Department of English and Literary Studies, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, has held its 41st Annual Conference and Diamond Jubilee.

The conference, with the theme: _“Rethinking Identity in Language, Literary and Communication Studies in the Digital Age,”_ took place on Tuesday, 8th September, 2026, at the CBN Centre for Economics and Finance, Main Campus, Samaru, Zaria.

Speaking at the occasion, the Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Prof. Adamu Ahmed, said the gathering was more than a conference, but an invitation to rethink “who we are, how we represent ourselves, and how our identities are being reshaped by the rapidly changing world of digital communication.”

Prof. Ahmed also said for generations, language and literature have been among the principal ways through which individuals and societies have lived.  

He congratulated ESAN and the Department of English and Literary Studies for organizing the conference and wished all participants successful deliberations.

Earlier in a welcome address, the Chairman, Local Organizing Committee, Prof. Saminu Isyaku, said the theme of the conference was both timely and intellectually significant.

Prof. Saminu emphasized that in an increasingly digital and interconnected world, traditional understandings of identity are being continually negotiated, reconstructed, and represented through language, literary practices, media, and diverse forms of communication.

He said the conference would provide a vibrant intellectual platform for scholars, researchers, teachers, practitioners, and postgraduate students to interrogate these transformations from diverse theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary perspectives.

Prof. Saminu thanked the Vice-Chancellor and the University Management for their unwavering support towards the success of the conference.

In a keynote speech, the former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, NUC, Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, explained that English was both a language of colonial history and an indispensable language of national and international communication.

Prof. Rasheed, who is also the former Vice-Chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, noted that the literary canon has been shaped largely elsewhere, yet Nigerian students belong to histories and traditions extending far beyond those canons.

According to Rasheed, universities exist within one of the world’s most linguistically diverse societies, where English increasingly performs the paradoxical role of an inherited language being appropriated with distinctly Nigerian inflections.

He said the achievement of scholars was not to resolve the tension permanently, but to make the tension intellectually productive.

He reiterated that over the years, Nigerian scholarship helped consolidate African literature as an indispensable field of enquiry, and expanded the study of Nigerian and African varieties of English.

He said English in Nigeria ceased to be merely a borrowed linguistic possession, but an object of creative appropriation, scholarly interrogation, and cultural negotiation.

Prof. Rasheed thanked the organizers for the opportunity given to him and wished participants fruitful discussions.

The highpoint of the event was the induction of four distinguished scholars as Fellows of ESAN and the honorary conferment of the ESAN Fellowship on the Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Prof. Adamu Ahmed.