Language issue has been considered as a major problem to Africa. The continent has so many distinct languages as well as distinct ethnic groups. It is the introduction of the colonial languages that enable Africans to communicate with each other intelligibly: otherwise, Africa has no one central language. Among the colonial languages are English, French, Arabic and Portuguese which today serve as lingua franca in the mix of multiple African languages. Based on that, there is a serious argument among African critics about which language(s) would be authentic in writing African literature: colonial languages which serve as lingua franca, or the native indigenous languages. While some postcolonial African creative writers like Ngugi have argued for the authenticity and a return in writing in indigenous African languages, avoiding imperialism and subjugation of the colonisers, others like Achebe are in the opinion that the issue of language should not be the main reason in defining African literature: any languagecan be adopted to portray the lifestyles and peculiarities of Africans. The paper is therefore, designed to address the language debate among African creative writers. It concludes that although it is authentic to write in one’s native language so as to meet the target audience, yet many Africans receive their higher education in one of the colonial and/or European languages; and as such, majority do not know how to write in their native languages. Rather, they write in the imposed colonial languages in order tomeet a wider audience. Not until one or two major African languages are standardised, taught in schools, acquired by more than 80 per cent of Africans and used as common languages, the colonial languages would forever continue to have a greater influence in writing African literature. The paper recommendes that Africans should have one or two major African languages standardised, serving as common languages; also African literature should be written in both colonialand African languages in order to avoid the language debate by creative African writers.

Lexical stress is the combination of intensity, fundamental frequency and vowel quality acoustically. Like many other non-segmental features of English, it is very vital for intelligibility, foreign accentedness and comprehensibility since wrong placement of primary and/or secondary stress in English words might lead to different interpretations. The feature is not observable in Erei, which is a tonal language, where all the syllables or vowels in a word are given strong form. Erei language is different from free variable stress system of English, and the difference between the two languages may likely result in the transfer of Erei tonal system in the articulation of English lexical stress by native Erei speakers. The study examined the deployment of English lexical stress in the speech outputs of Erei-English bilingual speakers in Biase Local Government Area of Cross River State Nigeria. Eight subjects were selected from four secondary schools. Eight words, selected from Cruttenden's Gimson's pronunciation of English, were used for the analysis. The metrical theory, developed by Lieberman (1975), was adopted as the framework for the analysis. Findings indicated that Erei-English bilinguals place stress on the wrong syllables as shown in the native British speaker's output, and therefore, do not observe English rhythmic alternation rules. All the syllables in a word are almost given equal prominence, a rehash of the tonal nature of Erei, affecting the intelligibility of their spoken English. Based on the findings, the study suggested the availability of well-equipped language laboratories, provision of sophisticated audio-visual aids and computerised speech equipment in Nigeria as well as language teachers in L2 situations should focus instruction on non-segmental features before the individual segments to promote international intelligibility in the speech outputs of L2 users.