Educators, linguists, and policymakers have strongly rejected the Federal Government’s recent decision to enforce English as the sole medium of instruction in schools, warning that the policy will worsen the nation’s ongoing educational crisis.
This warning was contained in a communique issued at the end of the Annual Fafunwa Educational Foundation (FEF) Conference, held recently in Lagos.
The conference, themed ‘What Does The Research Say?: Mother Tongue Instruction and the Future of Early Education in Nigeria’, brought together prominent scholars, cultural leaders, teachers, and parents. Together, they urged the Federal Government to immediately reverse its cancellation of the 2022 National Language Policy and reinstate indigenous languages as the foundational basis for basic education.
Delivering a keynote address, Professor Francis Egbokhare of the University of Ibadan argued that Nigeria’s persistent learning crisis stems directly from a fundamental mismatch between the language of instruction and the learners’ native language.
‘What appears to be poor academic performance may actually reflect language barriers rather than intellectual limitations,’ Egbokhare asserted.
He warned that sidelining indigenous languages inflicts severe cultural damage, leading to a permanent loss of traditional wisdom and local worldview.
The Federal Government recently banned mother tongue instruction, citing an ostensible decline in student academic performance. However, conference participants sharply disputed this claim.
They noted that the Nigerian Academy of Education has explicitly denied the existence of any empirical evidence linking native-language instruction to poor academic results.
Instead, stakeholders argued that the policy’s past failures resulted from weak, half-hearted implementation, chronic underfunding, insufficient teacher training, and a lack of instructional materials.
Conference speakers cited decades of global and local research to support their demands.
Notably, they pointed to the landmark Ife Primary Education Research Project (1970-1978) and findings from UNESCO data that consistently show that children taught in their mother tongue demonstrate significantly higher reading comprehension by the end of primary and lower secondary school.
The communique formally called on the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, to restore the 2022 policy.
Additionally, the stakeholders urged state governments, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEB), and the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to collaborate immediately.
They demanded a massive commitment to teacher training and the swift development of early-grade textbooks in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and other indigenous Nigerian languages to prevent further decline in the nation’s schooling system.
The lecture also featured a panel session, presentation of post-doctoral awards to three scholars and the unveiling of a new book, _Babs Fafunwa: A Mini-Biography for Youngsters_, authored by celebrated writer Professor Okey Ndibe.
Dignitaries in attendance included the Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, and Prof. Sherifat Ndibe, who represented her mother, the widow of Babs Fafunwa, Dr Doris Fafunwa, and students of Babs Fafunwa Millennium Senior Secondary School, Ojodu.