IT was all for the sake of the mother tongue. At the National Institute for Nigerian Languages (NINLAN), Aba, Abia State, linguists and other professionals who turned up to mark the World’s Mother Tongue Day, stressed why it seems native dialects are facing a certain extinction.
They observed that the lack of parents in speaking their first languages to their children may account for the low profile of indigenous tongues.
The 15th anniversary of the International Mother Tongue Day attracted linguists from different parts of the country, including other pro-indigenous language campaign groups whose aims were to promote native dialects otherwise known as the L1 (first language) and ensure that they do not die in the face of growing challenge from westernisation and urbanisation.
Some of the speakers blamed parents for failing to lay the right foundation for the kids to use their indigenous language as a means of communication at home, also blame teachers for discouraging the students from speaking their native language.
While they all agreed that there was more to do in order to sustain indigenous languages, they also countered a report that Nigerian indigenous languages, especially Igbo, would soon go into extinction.
They called on education authorities and curriculum planners to indigenous Nigerian languages compulsory in secondary and tertiary institutions.
Benjamin Elugbe, Executive Director, NINLAN, said, “Today’s programme is to celebrate the mother-tongue day in line with the United Nation’s programmes and activities. In Nigeria, we are joining the United Nations in Feb 21 to mark the world mother-tongue day.
We are a mother day institute because we are for Nigerian languages, so it seems to me that however modest it may be, we should mark the occasion and that is why we decided that instead of asking somebody to deliver a lecture and all that we decided to ask people to demonstrate to us how they speak their languages and to say a few things about their respective languages as well.
“So, on a day like this, we count it as very important to reemphasise on the need for people to promote their culture and languages in order not to let it die.
“If you don’t take care of your languages, you don’t encourage people. You will just allow English Language to come and take over and before you know it, a lot of languages will be dead and as big as Igbo is, it is under threat as well from English.
“Igbo is under threat because people are not using the language as they should. Languages including Igbo which are not being encouraged are not passing from one generation to the other. For a language to survive, it has to move from the grandfathers to the immediate parents and to the children who pick up the language from the home, but today, it is not like that.
“Parents think that their children must start English immediately and so they drop Igbo and feel that the child should start listening to and learning English because they must have what they called a head start in their schools; taking their children to an English medium nursery and primary school that starts with English instead of starting with Igbo and this is based on a false assumption that if they start with the igbo, they won’t do well in English and that they will not do well in Nigeria and all that. It is not true; this why Igbo is seriously under threat and you have to also say that even the Yoruba and Hausa are also under threat. But the truth of the matter is that Igbo is more under threat than any other Nigerian language as far as I know”.
On the assumption that speaking the mother tongue would affect someone’s proficiency in the command of the English language, Mr. Elugbe said, “Your mother tongue doesn’t stop you from knowing English as much as you want to and, like I said, the situation where you think that you will make your child a native speaker of English, he will end up not being a native speaker of English and his local dialect either. So, the child loses out on both counts whereas the child could have been a good speaker of the two languages as well as Achebe put it.”
On why the government and other agencies have done well in encouraging and promoting Nigeria’s indigenous languages, NINLAN Executive Director said, “I don’t think so. The English syndrome is working against the promotion of our national languages; our indigenous languages are suffering from the promotion of English language. If you take the National Assembly for a start and you look at the 1979 constitution; it said that you could address the National Assembly in any of the indigenous languages and English. But if you look at 1999, you will see that there is a witling down of this. Because both in the 1989 and 1999 constitutions, they have removed all this. They have even now brought in the fact that you must have School Certificate including English before you can contest for political positions, whereas in 1979, you could be a stack illiterate in English but you know your Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba, then will use translators to interpret to others what you are saying, but they change that insisting that you must have enough English knowledge to function inside the National Assembly. So, without saying so, they made the language of the National Assembly become English.
[Also], “when you produce a teacher of the mother tongue, you must give him a job. So that’s one of the angles from which the mother tongue can help teachers in the mother tongue get jobs immediately. You know that if you have a place that can produce people in Nigerian languages who can do what they like in their languages including even entrepreneurship which we are trying to promote now, you will see that we can make a significant contribution towards alleviating job shortage”.
A student of Girls High School, Aba Miss Emole Nnenna, said, “I feel so excited to be here today to witness everything that has taken place today. I learnt that we should be proud to promote our mother tongue and that we should be part of our languages because it defines our personality and singles us out from the crowd. Having being part of this programme, it has helped me to understand the need to be proud of my mother tongue and as a change agent, I am going to make sure that I pass the lessons I learnt today from this seminar to my family members, friends and other students in my school who were not opportuned to be here today,” she said.
On his part, the National President, Igbodum Foundation, one of the pro-campaigners of Igbo language, Comrade Kingsley Uche, said:
“It is not an impressive thing that people especially the Ibos don’t speak their language unlike other ethnic groups. Embracing our languages ensures the continued existence of a people. People especially the Ibos assume that anyone who doesn’t speak his or her language is not a learned person. They believe that people who speak the English language are more learned than people who don’t speak English and this has caused people to sidetrack their local language to embrace the foreign one.
“As a pro-Igbo group committed to promoting the language, we held a lecture, Igbodum lecture, on January 29 at Abia State Polytechnic, Aba. It is an annual event where speakers and renowned igbo speakers will come and deliver speeches. The basic reason for the event is to promote our local languages and to preach to the people, the need for every ibo man and woman including our children to embrace the culture of communicating with the mother-tongue.
“We also have the Igbodum Television where we run all our programmes using the mother-tongue to reach the wider viewing audience with the aim of ensuring that the Igbo language will be sustained among its people contrary to the speculations that the Igbo language will die in the next 10 years. It is part of our contribution in the promotion of the Igbo language including other activities too numerous to list out.
“I am advising parents, pastors and traditional rulers to try as much as possible to ensure that they devote their time to educate their children, congregation and their subjects, telling them the need to embrace their local language and not to allow Igbo language die like the Latin language,” he advised.
