Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, has provided clarification on the claims that the government of President Bola Tinubu has banned the use of indigenous languages in Nigerian schools.
According to him, the use of indigenous languages was not banned, explaining that the government had to swing into action to stop what he suggested was the overuse of the languages in schools.
The minister said that the policy that has been in place for many years across the various regions was for the indigenous languages to be used in primary three.
However, he explained that Southeast, South-South and Southwest and Northcentral did not implement it.
He said that the Northwest and Northeast implemented the policy but it was over implemented.
“It was meant to be used up to primary three and switch over to English as language of instruction for Primary four.
“But in the places that were implementing, they were over implementing it, and they were using mother tongue to teach up to primary six and up to GSS, and they’re asking now to even teach up to SS three,” the Minister said in an interview on Arise News.
“Our concern is about pupils and students who will have to take national examinations in English.
“We’ve not banned the use of indigenous language in school. But then it’s the deployment.
“Today we have 646 languages in this country. Now that policy was enacted many years ago, the south west, south east, south south did not implement it. North Central did not implement it. We had Northwest and Northeast implementing it.
“And what we were now saying is that these kids that when they finish, they will have to do national exams, NECO, WAEC, JAMB conducted in English.
“Even they didn’t have enough instructional materials in those languages, so these kids were poorly educated, and as minister, we will not allow that to continue.
“We did an analysis on the literacy rate of those regions that over implemented and it was far, far behind compared to those regions that did not implement it.
“And what we now said is that we will go back to English as the language of instruction to make sure we standardised and trained our kids to be globally competitive, but the kids will still take one native language as part of their subjects in primary school, junior secondary and senior secondary,” he stated.
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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