Nobody had ever asked me to say it in Kibaku before.
That is how the contributor described the moment a recorder was first held up to him in Askira Uba, Borno State. He had spoken Kibaku his whole life. No one had ever asked him to put it on record.
Askira Uba sits in a part of Borno State that has spent years living through active banditry and displacement. Communities move. Elders die. Routines break. In conditions like that, an oral language with no written standard does not fade slowly — it can simply stop, mid-sentence, when the people who carry it are scattered or gone.
He said yes to being recorded because he believes Kibaku is dying, and with it, the culture it holds. For him, this is bigger than himself — not a hobby, not nostalgia, but something closer to protecting what is left of a community under real, active threat.
Over several sessions, the team recorded 14 hours of spoken Kibaku (ISO 639-3: kcg), currently documented as Vulnerable. Every recording was made with his informed consent, and he is credited by place and date, not reduced to a category.
This is what Atilingo means by infrastructure: not a museum shelf for a language already lost, but a pipeline that can move fast enough to catch a language while the people who speak it are still here to be asked.