My intention was to celebrate this year’s Mother Language Day with my brand new Honorary Professorship of Nupe Language from the USA, but because I am yet to receive the certificate, let me just go on with the celebration by making these following points.
Mother tongue is the easiest way of discovering the best in a child. Should a child understand his or her mother language well, such a child will have every reason to grow into a sage.
Mother tongue as we understand, is a child’s native language. It’s a language parents are expected to speak to their children from birth, to growing stages and even after. If a child is well-trained in a specific mother language at home and in his environment, such a child is mostly going to be more experienced and one could say that the child will be wiser than his peers.
Mother tongue facilitates the child’s development in personal understanding, sociability and cultural orientation.
Originally, it is important for a child to speak more than one language. Those who express themselves freely in mother tongue have more advantages than those who only have foreign language expertise. However, many parents are guilty of making wrong decision in their children’s up bringing.
Another important aspect to note for the mother tongue to be appreciated is for a community to organize tutorial classes for children to learn in their mother language how to read and write. English that’s a universal language is a property of some people who persuaded us to see reasons why the language is more important than our language, so we were convinced and we took it from them which is now a defeat to us because our children hardly see the importance of speaking and writing in their mother tongue. Lets take Nupe as a clear example. Should a Nupe child speak Nupe wrongly, our community overlooks it but once a child makes a blunder while speaking English such a child will be looked at as a misfortune to the society. And, why should a foreign language be seen as a role model instead of our native language. The privileges given to foreign languages are excessive, we have to concentrate on our mother language.
In many instances, our traditional rulers fail too on their responsibility to promote our mother languages. Many of them prefer to speak the established languages in their palaces instead of their native language to communicate. The wiser ones amongst them have translators in their palaces. In this aspect, we must say kudos to the Emirs that do that in Nigeria.
You see, we have lost the battle already to foreign languages, so what we should do now to sort out the problem is to raise platforms where these native languages would be taught either officially or unofficially that is at a foundation level, run by individuals or groups.
Some minority languages in Nigeria are lucky despite the fact that they are subjected to the same menace too, they are coping gradually by using their mother language to act movies, in religious centres, Radio and Television programs,etc.
The government’s role on this supersedes all. We do more of talks than actions. Our government must prioritize our indigenous languages in every plan and action it makes henceforth. And lest I forget, last year October 2020, we saw a national conference for Gbagyi ethnic group in Abuja. The conference was aimed at actualizing a uniformity of the language in the country. Up till now that I am writing this message, the Gbagyis are yet to do anything in that regards. The Nupes were facing similar challenges. The stakeholders could have a conference and discuss solutions to our collective problems but after the conference, the whole idea is left at the hall in which the conference took place. Later, the children of the Nupes will see no importance in having conferences over pertinent issues. However some concerned sons and daughters of Nupe swang into action by establishing a Centre where the language would be taught during the weekends and now they have classes and many institutions of learning are having interest to partner with them on the whole idea. This is great. Someone must always lead the way while others follow. But there is still more that needs to be done. More concerned hands need to join the deck so that together we salvage our mother languages. This is the way to go for every ethnic group not only in Nigeria and Africa but the world at large.
Thanks so much for reading and I wish all of us the Indigenous people a happy International Mother Language Day.
