There is no argument about which language of instruction should be used in early education in any serious country other than the mother tongue. The recent announcement by the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa that as from now English will be the medium of instruction for education reminded me about his predecessor in the same ministry, Tahir Mamman who suddenly decreed that only children 17 or older will be permitted to write the JAMB admission examination for entrance to Nigerian universities as if there were unchallengeable reasons to bar younger people of admission into university especially in a global environment where Nigerians and others were graduating in British and American universities abroad at ages lower than 17.
It seems the ministers were getting out of step with their positions. They seem to arrogate know-all powers to themselves until they are brought down to the reality of being removed from office.
I wonder whether the current minister was properly advised to take this decision because the research council in the ministry could not have done this because the council’s position and those of most departments of education in our universities are clear on this: they have said and written that one of the reasons for the low quality of our graduates in all departments of learning is that whatever we studied in other peoples’ language cannot be properly absorbed and internalized and if the foundation is not solid, whatever floors constructed on a weak base will be ab initio unreliable.
This fact may be stretching the argument too far but there is no doubt that if the foundation is not strong, the superstructure cannot be reliable. Besides researches by the late Babs Fafunso a professor of education and others suggest that we should study English as a subject in our local languages just as we use English to study many subjects now .This is what great countries like China, India and Japan as well as most of the Arab countries have done and it has not stopped them from making advances in science and technology.
The biggest argument one may have for the minister’s policy of teaching in English to infants is that this is what essentially but unofficially exists in practice among the educated middle class in Nigeria and among most Nigerians in urban centres where people speak a multiplicity of languages. But this does not make it rational to the point of becoming the law. We can also argue about how difficult it would be to translate all existing books in the sciences, medicine, technology and all subjects into our native languages.
Which of our about 300 languages would we choose without alienating the other speakers of languages not selected? This is apparently why the choice of Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba as official languages is not strictly enforced in official communication but English which is neutral has remained the lingua franca. The current policy is that early education should be in our local languages presumably in English, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba which have remained the official languages of the country. But what has become the constitutional provision of primary education remaining in the province of states? Then what happens to over 200 plus languages spoken by millions of other Nigerians?
If we can learn from our colonial experience in the North where Hausa was taught to all school children even though people in Northern Nigeria spoke other languages like Kanuri, Shuwa, Bura, Jukun, Chamba, Tiv, Angas, Birom, Fulfude, Nupe, Yoruba, Maguzawa, Igala, Idoma , Ebira and others if taken together may have outnumbered the Hausa native speakers. This policy has successfully knitted together perhaps more than 50% of Nigerians who now speak Hausa. There was no such language policy in the South though over the years Creole or Pidgin English is spoken all over Nigeria by people with a few years of exposure to the English language. This Creole/Pidgin of course cannot be seen as a native language. Some years ago, the late Professor Armstrong of the University of Ibadan in the 1960s suggested Igala as a strong candidate if Nigeria wanted a language to adopt as a national language because according to him, Igala has elements of Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. This was based on his academic study of Nigerian linguistics but I am not sure how far his suggestion got in the corridors of power in Nigeria where it was simply laughed out of court.
This new policy cannot be rejected on the basis that English was imposed on us by an outside authority. It has the support of presumably most people in Nigeria who may have taken up arms against government if a local language or group of languages were imposed on the country. The government probably learnt from the experience of the government of India which met stiff opposition while trying to impose Hindi on the vast country and population which had accepted English a neutral language. It also put us within the global medium of English with its abundant development of instructional material at all levels of the educational ladder. The argument of supporters of English is that if we don’t belong to the wide medium of the English language world, we would have to learn English to understand the language of computing and AI.
If we will gain something from early learning of English, and that the better we started early and this does not mean we will naturally not speak our mother tongue at home and in the market, worship places and perhaps as secret language when negotiating with foreigners or when sending what will amount to ‘coded language’ in the wider global world. This is my personal experience in diplomacy when we want to arrive at a quick decision without our opposite party knowing our position, this will depend on if some of our people speak the same language. This experience made decisions maker to insist that any young recruit into our foreign service must have passed at ordinary level a Nigerian language.
One cannot overemphasize the importance of the ability to speak a mother tongue. Inability to do so undermines one’s indigenous personality and character in a world where confidence in one’s skin is an imperative for one to be able to assert one’s personality in a world of competition of cultural sensitivity. In conclusion, studies in mother tongues, many of which we have in Nigeria will continue to be an advantage for those who study for use in politics, business and the market place economics.