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.
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