Nigeria joined the global community in celebrating the International Mother Language Day (IMLD) which has been celebrated annually around the world on the 21st February of every year since its inception at the beginning of the new millenium.

For this year's celebration, the Linguistics Association of Nigeria
(LAN) has raised an alarm that majority of the over 520 living
indigenous languages in the country are endangered, with roughly about
85 percent of the number going into extinction in few years from now.

The president of the association, Harrison Adeniyi stated that,
“giving the Nigerian linguistic situation, there are currently about
520 living languages out of which about 85% of them are minority
languages, some with less than 10 speakers… the vast number of these
minority languages are undocumented, without orthography and are
currently at the brink of obliteration.”

This is coming few weeks after the minister of science and technology,
Ogbonnaya Onu was quoted saying “mathematics and other core science
subjects should be taken in indigenous languages across Nigerian
schools.

The reason he gave was the low interest in mathematics and other
science subjects. He attributed the root cause of the problem to
unfamiliarity of the pupils with lingual franca in which they are been
taught.

“Pupils grow up with their indigenous languages at home before they
start going to school, where they are now taught in foreign languages.
So, we have observed that there is a challenge to understand the
foreign languages first before they could even start understanding
what they are being taught.” He said.

LAN in a statement by its president corroborated the minister’s
assertion, suggesting that indigenous languages, especially the three
major languages of Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba should be made compulsory
courses for students in Nigerian universities.

He cited a situation where a medical doctor was unable to attend to a
patient in Lagos state hospital because the doctor did not understand
Yoruba and the patient couldn’t communicate in English which lead to
the eventual death of the patient few hours later.

However, stakeholders in the education sectors have raised concerns
over the recent call for indigenization of school curriculum,
especially when teaching core science subjects.

A basic science teacher, Oladele Taiwo who was interviewed by Oak TV
stated that, adopting native languages in teaching science subject is
a wild goose chase that will bring no fruition in Nigeria’s
educational system.

In his words, “if we are to use our indigenous languages to teach
basic subject like mathematics, the question is how do we intend to
translate basic terms which are not found in our languages?”

Towing similar path was a teacher who gave her name simply as Miss
Ola. she aired her fear citing an instance with the subject of
chemistry which is a subject with numerous terms that cannot be found
in Nigeria’s indigenous languages.

Gloria Ken-Okoroafor who is a head teacher in an Abuja based school
stated that, “for the children whose first language is an indigenous
language, it will make absolute sense for communication instruction to
be in their mother tongue. However, for those whose first language is
English, we expect it to be English.”

Ogbonna Chukwunonso, Nigerian Representative of the Texas based
Language Education Initiative suggested that, having both English
curriculum side by side with curriculum in native languages will be
the best measure to adopt.

“I believe that when it is placed side by side, if there is a
curriculum that combines both the local language and the English
language, I think it will give a better balance.” He said.

International Mother Language Day was set aside since 2000 by the
UNESCO to promote peace and multilingualism.

The date 21st February was adopted because it corresponds to the day
in 1952 when students from the University of Dhaka, Jagannath College
and Dhaka Medical College, demostrating for the recognition of Bengali
as one of the two national languages of East Pakistan were shot dead
by Pakistani police officers near the Dhaka High Court in the capital
of present day Bangladesh.
The theme for the 2017 International Mother Language Day is
“sustainable future through multilingual education.”


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U66n-q4hhCc

Source: http://oak.tv/opinion-nigerian-schools-teach/

Long overdue

No country ever developed through copy and paste. We reason in our mother tongue and translate into English language but the reverse is what we are taught in school. Tell me how can we win Nobel prize?

Hehehe

You mumu's want to divide this country the more. You thought me with igbo and the person thought with yoruba, hw can we both rub mind on research.? Crayfish dey una head

It is possible if we put our mind to it...language is power...ask China!!!