Education Minister Maruf Tunji Alausa recently announced the scrapping of the National Language Policy (NLP) that mandated the use of indigenous languages as medium of instruction in the early stages of education. The policy, which had been in place since the 1970s and was last reinforced in 2022, sought to promote Nigeria’s indigenous languages – many of which are going extinct – and preserve the country’s cultural heritage, especially in the formative years of life.
In 2022, government approved the NLP, which stipulated that from early childhood education to primary six, the language of instruction should be in the mother tongue or language of the immediate community of the young learner, while English remained the official language used in latter stages of education and in formal settings. It was projected that this would improve early childhood learning outcomes.
The minister, however, said Nigerian children had been performing abysmally in public examinations as a result of being taught in their mother tongue. According to him, the decision to cancel the policy followed extensive data analysis and evidence showing that the use of mother tongue as the main medium of instruction had negatively affected learning outcomes in several parts of the country.
He unveiled this new thinking at the 2025 Language in Education International Conference organised by the British Council in Abuja, penultimate Wednesday.
Speaking at the conference, Alausa said English would now be the language of instruction in Nigerian schools, from primary to tertiary levels. ‘We have seen mass failure rate in WAEC, NECO and JAMB in certain geo-political zones of the country, and those are the ones that adopted this mother tongue in an over-subscribed manner. This is about evidence-based governance. The national policy on language has been cancelled. English now stands as the medium of instruction from the pre-primary, primary, junior secondary, senior secondary up to the tertiary education level,’ he said, adding: ‘Using the mother tongue language in Nigeria for the past 15 years has literally destroyed education in certain regions. We have to talk about evidence, not emotions.’
The minister argued that data gathered from schools across the country revealed that students taught primarily in indigenous languages recorded higher failure rate in national examinations and struggled with Basic English comprehension. ‘The national policy on language has been cancelled. English now stands as the medium of instruction across all levels of education,’ he affirmed, urging stakeholders with a different view to present verifiable data in support since government remained open to evidence-based dialogue that would strengthen the education sector.
Whatever may be the merit of the data referenced by the minister as basis for the policy backtrack, it sucks that he chose a forum organised by the British Council to make the announcement because of the neo-colonial ring of the whole scenario. We think it was insensitive to have made the announcement at that event.
Besides, the mother tongue policy did not come about in the first place without empirical and data evidence. One-time education minister and reputed scholar, the late Professor Babs Fafunwa, was a promoter of this policy and he pushed it on the strength of findings from a six-year Ile-Ife, Osun State, primary education study which showed that mother tongue as medium of educational instruction for the first 12 years of a child’s life aided learning outcomes. Research, according to him, showed that the Nigerian child was better suited to acquire skills and attitudes through the mother tongue.
Reports also cited studies by the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) and World Bank which showed that early grade learners achieve higher literacy and reading outcomes when taught in their first language, compared with those taught exclusively in English. Mother tongue learning is indeed a global best practice, and authorities have argued that scrapping that mode of education would not necessarily improve English proficiency among second language learners. ‘Many countries around the world use their local languages to educate their children; the Chinese use Mandarin, Pakistanis use Urdu, Indians use Hindi, and the Basotho use Sesotho. Nigeria should not be an exception,’ a scholar of Physical and Computational Chemistry at Kwara State University, Malete, Kwara State, Professor Sikiru Ahmed, recently told PUNCH newspaper.
We are of the view that the authorities did not do enough troubleshooting regarding what may have accounted for poor learning outcomes before coming to a sweeping and wrongheaded decision to kill the education by mother tongue initiative. The challenge has never been with the policy concept, but with its implementation owing to lack of adequate government investment in curriculum development and training of teachers to deliver the policy mandate. Educationists described the somersault as a setback to educational development, quest for national identity and cultural preservation – which other policies of government like the restoration of History as a taught subject in schools incidentally seek to reinforce.
‘The national language policy was about enhancing learning by teaching children in a language they understand from a young age. Various research studies have shown that teaching in the local language, alongside English, removes learning barriers. There is a popular saying that ‘the gateway to the human heart is his mother tongue.’ If implemented, the policy was capable of fostering national unity and cohesion among different ethnic groups,’ Professor Ahmed was reported saying.
Another scholar argued that the claim that mother tongue instruction promotes poor academic performance should have been subjected to empirical scrutiny before the policy backtrack. ‘Research has shown that pupils taught in their local language perform better, comprehend faster and can learn other languages easily. The ministry should have also examined the role of English as a language of instruction, mainly in elite schools, before concluding. I believe the government should have engaged educationists and university researchers before making such a sweeping reversal,’ Professor Oyesoji Aremu of the Department of Guidance and Counselling at the University of Ibadan, said.
Other educationists acknowledged that the language policy implementation was fraught with challenges owing to Nigeria’s linguistic diversity. According to them, the policy was hobbled by the fact that Nigeria has over 600 dialects and there were neither trained teachers nor adequate instructional materials, not to mention the difficulty in deciding which language to adopt in multilingual communities.
But that is exactly why we argue that scrapping the policy was an abdication, not a solution. Government could have worked harder at curriculum development and manpower training to iron out the bottlenecks, not surrender to defeat as it has done by throwing out the baby (i.e. benefits of mother tongue learning) with the bath water.
Actually, it was jurisdictional overreach of sorts for government at the centre to have decided on primary and secondary education modalities that state governments and councils could have been saddled with the task of ironing out. You do not guillotine your natural identity just because you can’t get a handle on what it takes, and adopt a borrowed identity from foreign lands. We therefore enjoin a reconsideration of the language policy reversal.