PENULTIMATE week, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved a new national language policy for primary schools which makes mother tongue a compulsory medium of instruction from primary one to six. Revealing this during an interview with State House correspondents shortly after the meeting, the Minister of Education, Mr. Adamu Adamu, stated that the most dominant language spoken by the host community would determine the mother tongue used in each school. He said: “Nigeria now has a national language policy, and the details will be given later by the ministry. One of the highlights is that the government has now agreed that primary school instruction, for the first six years of learning, will be in the mother tongue.” While acknowledging the Federal Government’s awareness of the difficulties in implementing the policy, Adamu said it needed time to develop instructional materials and employ qualified teachers to implement it fully. Nonetheless, he averred that the policy had officially taken effect. As he noted, “we have 625 languages at the last count and the objective of this policy is to promote and enhance the cultivation and use of all Nigerian languages.”
Naturally, the announcement has enjoyed warm acceptance across a broad spectrum of associations and Nigerians fully cognizant of the gains of learning in the mother tongue. Speaking as a member of the committee pressing for the adoption of the mother tongue policy, a linguist at the University of Ibadan, Professor Francis Egbokhare, enthused: “I am happy about the first real language policy. The more languages you learn, the better; it has a cognitive advantage. It does not undermine small group; we have been on it since 2018.” In its own reaction to the policy, the Nigerian Publishers Association (NPA) commended the Federal Government, saying that the policy was in line with the association’s calls for the adoption of indigenous languages in the teaching of science at all levels of education. In a statement signed by the association’s President and Chairman-in-Council, Dr. Uchenna Cyril Anioke, the association said: “There is abundant evidence to show that nations which teach and publish books in their local languages are more advantageously positioned than those which rely entirely on the English language. India which today has become a choice place for medicine teaches and publishes more in the mother tongue than English language.”
To be sure, the Federal Government’s latest move is a good one. Nigerian languages are a core part of the Nigerian identity and heritage and there is no reason to suppose that any investment in them can be a waste. In previous editorials, we had cited scholars such as Wale Adegbite on Nigeria’s linguistic profile, calling for adequate investments in the indigenous languages. According to Adegbite, with the categorisation of the languages spoken in Nigeria in terms of number of speakers and the roles assigned to languages, there is a dominant official language, namely English; major ethnic languages or regional lingua francas proposed but not utilised as official languages (Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba); a transnational language proposed as second official language (French); main ethnic languages used in network news (Angas, EFik/Ibibio, Fulfude, Kanuri, Ebira/Igala, Ijo, etc); minor ethnic languages (Fula, Ikwerre, Itsekiri, Jukun, etc); a restricted lingua franca (Nigerian Pidgin), and languages for religious and personal use (Arabic, Latin and German).
Of course, for sociopolitical reasons, English continues to be promoted in every spectrum of the national life without commensurate attention to the languages in which the vast majority of Nigerians have the greatest facility. The impression is given that the country’s future can simply be entrusted to English without qualifications. Naturally, while scholars and policymakers have tended to err on the side of caution, calling for the maintenance of the place of English and heavy investment in Nigeria’s major languages, namely Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba in the hope that one of them might become Nigeria’s national language in future despite the recognised “antagonistic great traditions,” the fact is that extant policy on Nigerian languages has hardly ever been implemented.
To be sure, the place of the mother tongue/language of the immediate environment in education has long been recognised in Nigeria’s national language policy; what has been lacking is implementation. Long ago, policymakers recognised the absurdity of otherwise bright and vivacious children getting tongue-tied in school because of the non-use of the language in which they have been brought up from the cradle. The policy recognises the critical need to ensure smooth transition from home to school, but it is a fact that generations of Nigerian primary school pupils have been punished for speaking “vernacular,” often by teachers without any impressive English skills. We would therefore expect the Federal Government to walk the talk this time.
In doing so, it needs expert advice and must not proceed without it. Without sounding immodest, the heritage and array of talents that Nigeria parades in linguistic expertise are huge. Nigeria has a vast network of established language scholars and specialists and a body of research whose core findings need to be harmonised to drive the new policy. Since language matters, particularly in a maximally diverse, multilingual and multicultural clime like Nigeria, have vast implications for national cohesion and development, the Federal Government must deploy the expertise available in the Ministry of Education, the universities and language centres in implementing this policy. In doing so, it would realise what resources (specialist pool, metalanguages, etc) are already available and what resources need to be procured. As citizens of the world, Nigerian languages are not in the same category, and it would do well to recognise what scholars such as Nolue Emenanjo have characterised as “the tradition of the majors,” that is, Nigeria’s most widely spoken and developed languages, and how they came to acquire their present status.
We believe that the wisdom in the provisions on mother tongue teaching has been so well demonstrated, proven and documented over the years that it is strange that the government is just waking up now. Perhaps the adage that it is better late than never would suffice here if only it would seriously pursue this newfound project and put in place all the necessary structures to ensure that Nigerian children begin to benefit from the advantages in mother tongue teaching. We hope that it is resolved to make the policy productive and effective in order to reap its bounteous benefits.
Needless to say, for this project to succeed, the Federal Government must work with state governments. Indeed, this policy requires a meeting of the National Council of State, not just the FEC. On current evidence, there is nothing to suggest that the states would be averse to mother tongue usage in education. For instance, the deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State, Mr. Moses Ekpo, was reported to have decried the decline in the use of local languages, particularly by the younger generation, and called for their inclusion in the school curriculum. Ekpo reportedly made the call while receiving a delegation of the National Institute for Nigerian Languages, Abia State, led by its Executive Director, Professor Obiajulu Emejulu. The delegation was in the state to present published texts for the teaching of Annang (language) at the level of the Universal Basic Education. In the same vein, Governor Aminu Masari of Katsina State was reported in March this year to have urged teachers in various institutions in the state to teach pupils in their mother tongue. The governor gave the charge during the launch of three books on poetry, literature in Hausa, and translation of the English dictionary to Hausa.
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Besides, as part of efforts to protect, preserve and promote the Yoruba language, Commissioners of Education in the six South-West states and Kwara and Kogi states met in Ibadan, Oyo State, in March this year. According to a statement issued by the organiser of the meeting, Yoruba World Centre, the commissioners will be joined by chairmen of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) and chairpersons of the Committee on Education in the South-West and Kwara and Kogi Houses of Assembly, with the meeting deliberating on, among other things, institutional backing for scholars and private sector operators involved in the promotion of Yoruba in order to re-establish it as a language of commerce and development. Part of the stated objectives of the meeting was to examine the role of Yoruba as a tool for development, nation-building, youth empowerment, national unity and peaceful co-existence.
In previous editorials, we recalled with pride the landmark study spearheaded by the late Professor Babatunde Fafunwa on the efficacy of Yoruba as a language of instruction in primary school, a study which established the fact that using mother tongues like Yoruba as a language of instruction in primary education, with adequate teaching of English as a subject on its own, is far better than the practice of using English to teach all subjects except the indigenous languages provided for by the National Policy on Education. That is still our position and, happily, the Federal Government concurs.
