Why banning mother tongue instruction misses the point

Nigeria’s decision to ban the use of indigenous languages in early education arrives at a moment when the rest of the world is moving toward decolonising knowledge and reclaiming linguistic identity. The choice to ban Mother Tongue policy, also known as the Language in the Immediate Community reinforces a colonial mindset that has shaped our educational system for decades. Declaring the policy ineffective under our current educational conditions is disingenuous and there is a need to interrogate the justifications for the ban.

Blaming indigenous languages for poor exam performance distracts from the actual, well-documented reasons Nigerian children struggle academically. Standard examinations such as WAEC, NECO, and JAMB have never been neutral measures of merit. Using these metrics to declare the Mother Tongue policy a failure completely ignores the structural barriers that define education in Nigeria. Overcrowded classrooms, absence of adequate materials, poor infrastructure, lack of access to WASH facilities, prolonged school closures due to insecurity and climate-related disasters, trauma, malnutrition, and poverty are the real issues that children grapple with that impact their academic outcomes. It does not matter whether a child is taught in English or in their mother tongue, as long as the basic amenities for a safe and quality learning environment is not met, the education outcomes will reflect these poor structures. Acknowledging that these examinations inevitably privilege students with access to well-resourced schools is important. Socio-economic conditions are a truer determinant of achievement gaps than solely language of instruction.

The ban also lacks empirical evidence that tracks where Mother Tongue instruction was effectively implemented and how those learners performed in Nigeria. There is no evidence that learners who were taught using the language of the immediate community model could not transition to English or recorded poorer learning outcomes in foundational literacy and numeracy. It is methodologically inappropriate to link the JAMB, WAEC and NECO outcomes to a policy that does not immediately reach the children writing those exams. With this lack of data the comparative logic used to condemn the policy falls apart when examined closely. We are left with the classic conditioning of biased interpretations of regional educational outcomes under the cover of English proficiency, rather than a critical analysis of educational quality. Other countries have recorded the impact of Mother Tongue instruction in improving enrollment rate. In Chile, the mother tongue policy led to an increase in enrollment by 50 per cent. Nigeria has over 18 million out of school children. A number that has been on an incline despite the UBEC free education policy of 2014. Learning about the scope of positive impact of the Mother Tongue policy is key to supporting implementation practices and identifying the dynamic importance of the policy.

Furthermore, the ban itself disregards the realities of teachers who have long used indigenous languages as a practical tool to bridge learning gaps in overcrowded classrooms. Mother Tongue instruction was not an ideological experiment to practitioners as much as it was a validation of what teachers were already doing to support learning. To suddenly criminalise a strategy that teachers depend on is to disregard their expertise and the challenges they face. Teachers understand the need for learners to learn in a language that they think, communicate and express themselves in coherently. Depending on English as a sole learning language creates faultlines in learners’ development. Such learners may express English proficiency through rote learning, but lose the tendency for critical thinking and the ability to transfer their learning into their own creation. A ban such as this sends a message that the system does not see the teachers, children, parents, and caregivers who make education possible. This policy was an opportunity to standardise and strengthen the practices that already worked, to support teachers, and to bring structure to a multilingual system. The ban discards all this potential.

It is also important to note that the Mother Tongue or Language of the Immediate Community (LIC) measures are part of the Language-in-Education model for the implementation of the National Language Policy, launched in 2022. This comes decades after the Sixth Edition of the National Policy on Education of 2013, which also recommends learning through Mother Tongue instructions. The combination of these policies recognises Nigeria’s vast linguistic diversity and sought to standardise languages, develop orthographies, create curriculum materials, and expand the use of indigenous languages in media, administration, and the economy

Mother Tongue instruction is, therefore, ideally a significant component and core element of nation-building in a multilingual and cultural nation contrary to how the ban views this as solely an isolated experience that happens in classrooms between teachers and learners. Educated Nigerians live in communities that speak languages other than English, and they deserve an education that equips them to serve those communities. For a policy that seemed important enough to receive duplicate recognition and significance in education, suddenly banning it contradicts our awareness of its importance. It reveals a lack of commitment to long-term reform of the education sector in two ways.

Firstly, the policy itself provided a ten-year window for piloting, refining, and scaling the implementation models including the Language-in-Education model. A policy cannot be declared a failure when the systems required for its implementation were never created. No large-scale teacher training was conducted. Instructional materials were not produced. No comprehensive pilots were run. There were no evaluation frameworks, and no substantial budget allocations. The current budget allocation for education is 7.9 per cent which still falls below the recommended 15-20 per cent stipulated by UNESCO. Realistically engaging with this policy would have required better investment. The government did not invest in building the scaffolding that such a significant reform required. Instead of a premature ban, an ideal response is addressing and confronting the chronic underinvestment that has crippled Nigerian education for decades.

Secondly, such a reform requires the acknowledgment of underlying nuances in the plights that face intercultural relationships within Nigeria. The socio-linguistic survey of language diversity and language use (National Educational Research Development Council – NERDC 2008, revalidated 2021) found that there are 540 languages spoken in Nigeria. There is hardly a homogeneous cultural community in Nigeria; all are richly diverse in language, cultural practices, dialects and religion. This diverse landscape, otherwise an asset, has been weaponised to drive polar relations between cultures over the years. As such, we exist in a political climate of legitimate fear that any language declared as the language of instruction will signal the government’s credentialing of one language over the others. This can create explosive frictions in communities where a language assumes dominance and minoritises others. This is a valid challenge, however, the government ought to deeply consider the role education can play in building intercultural tolerance and a viable peacebuilding tool in Nigeria. Multicultural considerations in education is not a mere tool of literacy for Nigeria. It is important and critical for the education sector to lead on all fronts of cultural preservation and take the reins in promoting education as a real instrument for social cohesion.

The use of mother tongue as a language of instruction is not a novel idea, nor is it an impossible challenge. Other multilingual nations have faced similar complexities and responded with intentional investment, careful planning, and context-driven solutions. Nepal has developed reading materials in more than 20 languages, while the Philippines has aligned textbooks in 14 indigenous languages with its national curriculum. Nigeria can do the same or even more if it chooses to

One way to reverse the longstanding inequities in foundational learning is to recommit to the National Language Policy and honour the ten-year implementation window it established. Following this commitment should be targeted investment in teacher training, development of instructional materials in the languages of the immediate community, and a transparent monitoring and evaluation framework. These are the minimum structural conditions that any policy needs for a chance to succeed.

Ultimately, a nation that seeks improved learning outcomes must invest in solutions grounded in evidence, context, and cultural relevance. Besides, when we acknowledge that language is both a cognitive asset and a societal development asset, banning its role in the learning of children is an attempt to jeopardize progress in nation building.

Tarfa resides in Abuja email: [email protected]

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