Mother tongue is the first Language a person is exposed to.
I’m recent times, especially in Nigeria, we seem to have abandoned our mother tongue and focused more in grooming our children with English Language. In as much as English is necessary for communication because we don’t have a general language as a country, we should also try to learn and teach the next generation about our mother tongue.
Our Language is our identity and it should be preserved with outmost pride.
In a publication by Late Babatunde Fafunwa, the first Nigerian Professor of Education and a former Minister for Education on educating our children with our mother tongue , he stated that children should be groomed with their mother tongue to help in the innovation of key things and preserve our languages.
He further explained the need for children to have education in their mother tongue for the first 12 years of their lives, that in this period a child’s attitude and aptitude are developed. It will also help the Nigerian child to be encouraged from start to develop curiosity, spontaneous flexibility, initiative, and mechanical comprehension. Children should be made to acquire these skills using the mother tongue as a medium of education which afterall is the natural way of learning.
To Babs Fafunwa, Education must be relevant to the needs of the society.
Recall that recently one Mazi Ogbonnaya Okoro wrote and published a physics textbook in Igbo Language, this development will go a long way in helping the Igbo people to understand the strange and difficult things about physics.
The current Education Minister with support from the Federal government can make this achievable in other to help ourselves and our children understand things that are being taught and also help to preserve our different languages.
Efayemiode Lekam.
