There has always been a debate about Nigeria’s official language, and more importantly, the language of instruction in our schools. What language do you have to be proficient in to be considered literate in the Nigerian context, or why are Nigerians even being taught in the English language, our colonial master’s language, and not our mother’s tongue?
The cultural nationalists have argued that the reason we haven’t made much progress, especially in economic and technological development, is because we have not been teaching in our native languages, which they believe would make teaching and learning easier, citing countries like China and India as examples. Some Nigerians believe those who can read and write Arabic or Ajami script can’t be classified as illiterate.
50% of Nigerians are Muslims. Arabic being the liturgical language of Islam means sizeable numbers of Nigerian Muslims are literate in Arabic to various degrees. There’s also the Ajami writing system, which is a local language written in Arabic script; in Nigerian cases, the local language is Hausa.
Beyond Timbuktu, an intellectual history of Muslim West Africa talked about how those who were trained in the madrasah system in the Sahel region can’t become gainfully employed with this training and literacy they’ve acquired. Most of those who fall under this category have been shown to also be easy targets of terrorist organisations’ recruitment in that of the West Africa region, as a result of the fact that the language they have been trained in has limited use especially in their domestic socioeconomic context.
Their home country official language are either English or French, there is no doubt about them being literate according to literary definition of literacy but realistically we know being able to read and write in a particular language is not enough, the economic importance of the language and the global population of such language speaker is very important. This is proven by the increasing number of people from non-English speaking countries who have invested significant resources into learning the language.
This is why ‘I’m pro-keeping’ English as the language of instruction in our education system, even at the risk of getting into the bad book of the cultural nationalists.
Like someone mentioned in a Twitter conversation that inspired this part of the article, “Language is political.” The language and culture of the dominant power of an era will always be the most widely used, especially in education and commerce. Not being pragmatic in this situation has economic implications, such as economic isolation; I don’t think that is a good mountain to die on.
Literacy for the sake of literacy shouldn’t be the goal of any visionary government. Literacy rate should instead be seen as a tool for economic prosperity and improving the economic opportunity available to your citizens. An estimated 1.46 billion of the 7+ billion people on earth speak English around the world. In other words, 1 in every 5 persons on earth speaks English, the population has only been growing, the growth of the internet and economic opportunity that comes with it, like remote job opportunities, has been influencing this increase in population of English speakers. As it’s the default language of commerce in most of the world.
The visionary former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kew Yuan, understands this fact, that’s why he gradually shifted the language of learning in Singapore schools to English, even when he understands the political implications of adopting English as the language of instruction in Singaporean schools. Which was why he chose the gradualist approach, he would have locked a lot of his country citizens out of different economic benefits and opportunities, if he had placed nationalist politics over a pragmatic approach to governance.
Another issue with our native languages is their vocabulary limitations. Most of our native languages don’t have words for certain things and phenomena in different fields of study, especially in the STEM field. Solving this problem will require a lot of effort, resources, and time to achieve standardisation and widespread usage. This doesn’t appear to me as a good use of resources.
China, which a lot of people use as an example of why they should abandon “colonialist language” for their mother’s tongue, is a country of 1 billion+ people. Their country can be self-sustaining to some extent; you can’t compare it with your country of just a few million without any geopolitical importance. Having an English-speaking population is still an economic advantage today, till it is changed. Don’t lock your citizens out of this economic opportunity just to prove a nationalist point.
The cultural nationalist argument for using our native languages as the language of learning is not without merit. Our identity is tied to our languages. If we lost our mother’s language, we would have lost an integral part of who we are. I believe the pragmatic approach of adopting a widely used language, in this case English, as the language of instruction of your education system, while also preserving your native language using different policies and programs, which I will suggest some of in the later part of this article.
We must take a balanced approach between preserving and developing our native languages while also using a non native but widely spoken language with economic benefit as the language of learning. There are different approaches to achieving that, such as ;
• Regional Language Education: State government should make the dominant language in a state a core subject in schools, students must have a minimum of credit in that particular language; this is already in practice in Anambra State; I believe more states should introduce such policies.
• Incentivize Native Language Learning: Governments and sociocultural institutions should incentivize learning our native tongue. Competition with prize awards should be organised to promote these languages. People tend to learn things they believe provide them with economic benefits.
• Promote Native Language Literature: More literature should be produced in our local language dialects; writing is one of the best ways of preserving, developing, and promoting a language. This will also serve as a source of employment and career opportunities, which therefore incentivises learning this language.
We don’t have to choose one of the two; it’s in our best interest to take a realist approach. And do not slaughter economic growth on the altar of cultural nationalism.
