Mother Language Use: Panacea For Socioeconomic Development
By Ismaila Yahaya Kana
In this year’s Mother Language Day, I want to explore the real importance of raising children who can communicate in their mother tongue and why over indulgence in foreign language limits creativity and dampens development in Nigeria.
It is a known fact that the Chinese and Indians all made contact with English long before Nigeria was annexed to England in that evil Berlin conference where African nations were partitioned so disdainfully. Unfortunately, where as the Chinese and Indians resisted total linguistic annexation, Nigeria with its internal heterogeneity, and linguistic quibbles became lost in exogenous languages, especially English. Today, over 60% of Nigerian children born in Urban areas where their parents’ L1 is not the Language of the Immediate Community (LIC) grow up not speaking their Mother Tongue (MT), increasing the already raging fears of language death.
Indeed, many Nigerian languages have gone down this unfortunate path to extinction and there is no end in sight. Yet, there have been several policies in the past deliberately formed to forestall the dangerous trend, but to what end?
Starting in the 70’s, the National Policy on Education (NPE) proposed the use of the MT or LIC as the vehicle of instruction for children in beginner classes. Specifically, Pre-primary Education students are to be thought using the MT (L1) , while Primary students are to be learn using the LIC (L2). At higher primary, English (L4) becomes the medium of instruction. Meanwhile, one major Nigerian Language (L3) is made compulsory. However, this setup was fraught with many problems including but not limited to pedagogical and psychological issues, necessitating the set up of several committees including the NCE’s Technical Committee on the production of Teachers for major Nigerian languages, whose two volume report was ready in 1988. Several other committees spanning the 80’s through to the 90’s all took shots at the problem in a bid to perfect strategies of implementation for the NPE’s language component.
Indeed, to aid implementation, several resources ranging from Science and Technical Terminologies through Legislative Terminologies were developed by several parastatals in the education value chain all in the 1980’s for the three major Nigerian Language (MNL). This has been expanded to include other languages including Gbagyi, Nupe, Bini, Kambari, Kamuku, and Kanuri. This was done to “ensure that we inculcate the right social values such as the appreciation of one another’s cultures and greater sensitisation to the importance of national unity” says Aminu, a Linguistics scholar.
The idea is to gradually replace English as the language of research and creativity. As reported by Fanfunwa et al relating a case in Niger Republic, students taught using MT or LIC in lower classes were found to excel above their counterparts that didn’t enjoy that privilege, especially in higher vocational schools. Of course, this certainty is not lost on our policy makers. Unfortunately, policy thrust has been hampered by implementation, and this has proven rather costly to Nigeria’s drive for self sufficiency in every parameter of development.
For instance, the implementation of the language component of the NPE was to rely chiefly on the cooperation of states, especially those with lots of languages. The states were to key into the national design, liaise with linguists in their midst and create a local template that will be cascaded down until every language is reigned in. Unfortunately, the reality of this failure is Nigerians’ show of mastery in exogenous languages at the detriment of indigenous languages. Needless to say, this has proven rather costly.
Language only thrives when it is used in every facet of society. Be it Business, Administration, Research, Technology, Media and Acculturation. This is what really guarantees its potency over time. So, it is not even enough that Nigerians are taught in their MT or LIC because government business is still done in English. Take the Legislature for instance, despite the development of Legislative Terminologies as far back as 1988, Nigerian houses of legislation, especially at state levels continue to use English, in many cases heavily accented, to do legislative business. So, if the Legislature that makes laws refuse to practice the laws they make… Well!
It is worth repeating that this has left Nigerians, especially from so called minority languages whose parents managed to pass their MT to, to feel both emotionally lost due to complexities of inferiority making them uncomfortable communicating in public; and creatively shallow, due to the difficulty associated with translating thoughts back and forth between their indigenous language and English.
Undoubtedly, Nigeria’s queer brand of education which now equates high proficiency in spoken English with intelligence is also to blame. This has left many a talented Nigerian disadvantaged by circumstances beyond his/her control, making them lost in a labyrinth. This vicious combination of poor education and a deliberate refusal to implement Language Policy for Education means many brilliant Nigerians not fortunate enough to receive a good foundation education come to the University lodged in communication limbo between oblivion in concepts of their MT or LIC (which becomes useless at this level anyway) and inadequate proficiency in English which at this point takes over as medium of instruction.
Many of the students caught in this vicious circle spend their first two years of higher institution struggling to understand instruction, and by the time they get enough grasp of the concepts, they are already on their way out as average or low level graduates. These are the people that come out to man all critical sectors of Nigeria’s Socioeconomic machinery. Any wonder why particular problems have become recurrent over time in Nigeria?
The most unfortunate aspect of this dangerous trend is that, we are now increasing the ranks of Nigerians who are only Nigerians by national identity only, but can’t quite fit into their immediate linguistic collective which ought to be their identity. This loss of identity can be connected with the increase in crime and criminality as it has emerged that most of the crimes perpetrated against indigenous Nigerians are carried out by an Army of their uncultured new generation!
A study of the Afo/Eloyi dwellers of Keffi and Nassarawa of Nasarawa state has shown that many of the young generation of supposed speakers are neither highly proficient in the LIC (Hausa) nor are they proficient in their MT. Much of the problem according Usman AO and Kana IY, stem from the homestead. Parents have completely abandoned their responsibility of transmitting the MT to their children through family socialisation, preferring instead to reinforce the LIC in their children. And, since the LIC is not the parent’s L1, performance in it is naturally accompanied with excessive transfer from their L1, thereby bastardising their children’s mastery of the LIC. In the end, the children will neither master the LIC nor will they know enough of their MT causing them problems of integration both ways.
Unfortunately, no government policy can correct this monumental parental dereliction of responsibility. Parents must be reminded that there is a cause and effect relationship between their failure to transmit the MT to their children and whatever becomes of the language long after they are gone. To put it plainly, posterity will not forgive them for denying their children their right to a Sociocultural identity – that which their own parents so freely passed on to them.
All this nonetheless, government must make effort to ensure the implementation of the language component of the NPE, for despite the fact that it seems not to be really friendly to minority languages, it is still better than the current elevation of English in a circle of confusion that has left Nigerians torn between their Nigerian-ness and an Americanism that is hurting their ability to really communicate ideas.
A better model will be to adopt the neutral Nigerian pidginised English which has developed into a creole, and by extension, a language with over 100 Million speakers in Nigeria alone! With its current national spread, the pidgin language which is increasingly becoming the MT of many urban dwellers could solve Nigeria’s lingua-identity crisis once and for all. It is my belief that if this is done, and a national orientation campaign is mounted by government to remind parents of the importance of transferring their native languages to their children, Nigerians may rediscover their cultural and traditional creativity. It is my belief that when Nigerians begin to think and act in one language without the current inner translation between competing languages, even our street talents – those without a formal education can begin to contribute to plugging our technological gap.
Let it be known that learning the MT which is done through various means including dramatization, dancing, singing, folk tales and many more comes naturally imbued with veritable teachings in morals, values and traditional norms. Needless to say, the excessive erosion of these norms have become manifest in today’s Nigeria and unless something is quickly done to arrest the situation, may lead to the implosion of this nation.
Yahaya writes from Kana of Nassarawa LGA in Nasarawa state and be reached on: kanaismail@yahoo.com
