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ACHIEVING AN ALL INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE SYSTEM IN NIGERIA

By Josiah Egbilika

Linguist, Indigenous Language Advocate 

Every 21st February, the world celebrates the international mother tongue day. This day is set aside to create awareness of the necessity of indigenous languages and why the globe should have language tolerance noting that despite the differences in our languages, we are one.

This year, the celebration is special as it marks the 25th year, silver jubilee of the celebration of the international mother tongue day which was adopted by united nations in 2000 after been initiated by Bangladesh the year before.

This therefore calls for a reflection to the Nigerian situation. For 25 years, what has Nigeria achieved, how have we felt in terms of language development and sustainability?

While there may seems to be more negatives to the questions above, there are actually some positives we as a nation has achieved.

The past 25 years, Nigeria has developed some language policies to help the development of indigenous languages. There is also an increase in the awareness of the importance of indigenous languages. There is the improvements in documentation of the languages in Nigeria which has led to the recognition of the over 625 languages and over 2000 dialects existing in the country.

Also, the nation has enshrined language teaching in our schools with government universities studying some indigenous languages as courses. Furthermore, in some secondary schools, indigenous languages are taught as a subject even written in the popular West African Certificate Examination (WAEC).

However, even with these achievements, more work still needs to be done. Our languages face the fear of extinction. It is unfortunate but it has to be stated that none of the over 625 and 2000 recognized languages and dialects respectively is free from extinction.

Beyond battling with the effect of foreign languages, they are battling the effect of neglect. Today, some languages have lost their original sound system. Some have lost their words or even sentence structures.

Various dialects battle the take over of their structures with the standard communication system adopted by the region. For instance, standard Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo are gradually taking over the different dialects existing in the regions.

Also, Nigerian languages are gradually losing native speakers due to cautious and consistent generational transfer. Beyond language scholars who document aspects of the languages for academic purposes, there have not been cautious community efforts towards documenting the various aspects of our indigenous languages.

These call for seriously attention to the development and sustainability of our indigenous languages. There is need for the government to declare State of emergency towards developing a workable framework for the development of our languages in Nigeria.

Government of all levels should set up committees made up of language scholars, linguists and native speakers. The committee should have the responsibility of working out actionable plans that will aid the implementation of our language policies, suggest new policies if need be.

Civil Society Organizations, Non-governmental organizations and the media should join in the advocacy encouraging people to speak their languages. These bodies should calve out behavioural messages that will sharpen the mind of people towards appreciating and using their languages.

Also, the media should have special programs in their stations that will handle language matters, a program specifically for language. This will help to recreate love for our indigenous languages and also aid generational transfer while improving the ones already in existence in their media houses.

Communities should always as a matter of necessity develop programmes that will encourage the use of indigenous languages.

Language scholars should go beyond scoring academic points to a people oriented language documentation system. A people oriented language documentation system is such that anyone can use the aspect of language documented to learn the language. 

The documentation should be simple and easy to understand not having so much linguistic "jagons" in them.

Furthermore, we should de-weaponize the use of our indigenous languages. We should instead use it to preach peace and oneness knowing that as a country, we are one despite the differences in our linguistic heritage. And, our languages should be taught from primary education to help inculcate the language to the upcoming generations.

These are necessary if we truly want to achieve an all inclusive language environment come 2030.

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