Reverse the anti-mother tongue policy, now

In a final move meant to set the stage for outlawing the use and weaken the study of Nigerian languages in schools, the federal government recently announced the scrapping of the national policy mandating the use of indigenous languages as the medium of instruction in Nigerian basic schools. The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, revealed this on Wednesday, November 12, 2025, at this year’s International Conference on Language in Education organised by the British Council in Abuja.

Media reports indicate that the annulment of this policy had been approved at the 69th meeting of the National Council on Education (NCE), held in Akure, Ondo State, from November 3 to 7, 2025. Meanwhile, Dr Alausa only completed the job started by the Minister of State for Education, Dr Suwaiba Ahmad, who had during an extraordinary meeting of the NCE that held in Abuja in February 2025, requested for the reversal of the National Language Policy (NLP) on mother tongue. Dr Suwaiba’s request came barely two weeks before the country marked this year’s annual International Mother Language Day celebrated every February 21.

Speaking at the conference, Alausa said English would now be the language of instruction across all levels of education, from primary through tertiary. He attributed the decision to data showing poor academic performance in areas where mother-tongue instruction had been emphasised. “We have seen a mass failure rate in WAEC, NECO, and JAMB in certain geo-political zones of the country, and those are the ones that adopted the mother tongue in an oversubscribed manner. This is about evidence-based governance. English now stands as the medium of instruction from pre-primary, primary, junior secondary, senior secondary, and tertiary education,” he said adding that “using the mother tongue language in Nigeria for the past 15 years has literally destroyed education in certain regions. We have to talk about evidence, not emotions.”

First, the minister’s choice of a British Council event in Abuja, for announcing this policy was not the best. Besides, Dr Alausa’s argument is as unscientific as a street talk; more so coming from the highest authority of the country’s education system, who supposedly should know better. Several nations including China, Germany, Japan, and Malaysia have not only deployed their indigenous languages as the language of instruction at all levels of learning and research in their respective education systems, but have also used them to develop. Dr Alausa’s designation, therefore, of indigenous Nigerian languages as responsible for students’ mass failure in the Senior Secondary School Examinations (SSCEs) is very unprofessional and too speculative to be relied upon.

The use of Chinese, German, Japanese, Malay, and even Swahili (an African language) has not made their users dafter or less intelligent than those who acquired scientific knowledge and made global impact in knowledge innovations through the English or French medium. Any data that attributes higher failure rates in national examinations to students’ use of or learning in indigenous languages can only be the outcome of a politically-motivated judgement, not the result of any evidence-based investigations.

It would be recalled that the policy of using indigenous languages as the medium of instruction in the early years of basic education was approved in 2022 as part of the country’s NLP. Specifically, the existing National Policy on Education (NPE) provides in Section 2 (20d) that “the medium of instruction in the primary school shall be the language of the immediate environment for the first three years in monolingual communities. During this period, English shall be taught as a Language.” This policy aimed to promote indigenous languages, recognise their equal status, and improve early childhood learning outcomes. This is even as scientific researches in language use have since established that children learn and understand science and mathematics faster when taught in their mother tongue. Nigeria’s former Minister of Education, Professor Babs Fafunwa, was a leading advocate of this policy.

The abrogation of the national policy on the use of indigenous languages in the first few years of basic education comes with a lot of questions for the Minister of Education. For instance, what becomes of the National Institute for Nigerian Languages (NINLAN) located in Aba, Abia State, which was established in 1993 to strategically support the implementation of the NLP in education? Furthermore, the new policy only seeks to undo the gains, which the country has laboured for in the past several decades.

This ill-conceived policy would further undermine the well-intentioned clauses of the NLP; plausibly setting the stage for the relegation and gradual extinction of some indigenous Nigerian languages. In Nigeria, 29 minor languages are said to be on the verge of disappearance. A UNESCO report had in 2006 predicted that Igbo language could become extinct after 50 years. Mother-tongues have strategic significance for every human society with critical implications for identity, communication, social integration, education and development.

While we urge Dr Alausa to halt his cold-shouldered regime of policy summersault since his assumption as Nigeria’s 36th minister of education, Daily Trust calls on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reverse Dr Alausa’s anti-mother tongue policy since national policies require the endorsement of the Federal Executive Council. Indigenous Nigerian Languages must live, not die.

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