Government at all levels have been advised to make policies for modern language as it is the future of the world for youths, especially in technology.
Speaking at the fifth anniversary of the Atelewo Cultural Initiative, the cofounders of the initiative, Rasaq Malik and Ibrahim Oreola, said there is the need to appreciate our indigenous languages, adding that this is the response to the myriads of challenges and threats facing the preservation and survival of the Yoruba culture and language.
They said there is a need for advocacy from the government to make the Yoruba language compulsory for people in primary and secondary schools.
Atelewo is a platform dedicated to reviving and repositioning the Yoruba culture with the mission to provide a platform for stoking interest and generating fulfilling engagements with the dynamics of the Yoruba ́culture through competitions, lectures, dialogues, and regular meetups.
According to Oreola, “At the university level, there is nothing stopping us in actually making Yoruba a general study programme because this is the only way in which people can better appreciate the culture.
“In the last five years, we have been at the forefront of promoting Yoruba literary culture through a series of projects involving online publishing, research, competitions and Yoruba books promotion.
“It is a well-known fact that the majority of Nigerians and Africans at large are unable to read or write in their indigenous languages, and this is not helped by education policies that do not mandate students to learn an African language up to secondary school level and the waning presence of quality literature materials in these languages.
“Government must therefore make policies that can advance our language.
“We import a lot into the country and some of these products, you will see the manual of the goods being written in Chinese, English, and French, but have you ever seen an imported product that has instruction in Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa? No, so we need a good policy to tackle this problem.
“In line with our goals and objectives, Atelewo launched the annual ‘Atelewo Prize for Yoruba Literature’ in 2020. The competition is open to previously unpublished writers working in Yoruba ́language.
“Today, we are happy to announce the launch of the third edition, and we’re calling on previously unpublished writers working in the Yorùbá language to put in their works. We’ll be accepting submissions from the 1st of June to the 30th of October. The government also needs to create more funds for young people to come together and compete in the language.
“For the next five years, in addition to making our existing works sustainable, we are also looking at building a state of the art cultural innovation hub dedicated to advancing the course of African cultures while leveraging innovation and technology. The cultural innovation hub will be a place for young people to collaborate physically and virtually to develop the next startup, idea, project and initiative that promote African cultures and languages.”
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promote indigenous languages… promote indigenous languages…
and then