BY: EMMANUEL CHUKWUMA, ENUGU.

Prominent pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) said that the ill-advised decision to cancel mother tongue has dragged Nigeria’s cultural, educational, and scientific advancements 100 years behind contemporary civilisations.

HURIWA urges the state Houses of Assembly to legislate the use of mother tongue policy in the early education of children into the laws of their respective states.

The Rights group which carpeted the neo-colonial tendency that guided that cultural suicide by the Federal Government which wrongfully cancelled the national policy mandating the use of indigenous languages as the medium of instruction in schools, said it has begun discussions with about 200 lawyers all over the country and also with leaders of cultural organisations to file a suit to stop President Bola Ahmed Tinubu from going ahead with the CULTURAL, SCIENTIFIC AND EDUCATIONAL SUICIDE.

This was made known through a statement made available to newsmen by the National Coordination of HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko.

According to him, “Which is exactly what the cancellation of the use of mother tongue as the vessel for educating our children just as it is done in all contemporary civilisations in Europe, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and many other modern-day highly sophisticated nations.

“HURIWA recalled that the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, made the announcement of the cancellation of mother tongue and the imposition of the foreign language of English as the teaching language in Nigeria at the 2025 Language in Education International Conference, organized by the British Council in Abuja on Wednesday. “Does it even make sense to teach our children in a foreign language of English when most of the greatest scholars and thinkers whose works we use in schools initiated these intellectual works and inventions in their distinctive mother tongue, because not all scientists are from England, nor are all the Mathematics experts from England. Why compel Nigerians to learn in the language of the English people? This is CULTURAL DEFEATISM AND ANNIHILATION.

“HURIWA said that in 2022, the Federal Government approved a National Language Policy (NLP), which stipulates that from Early Childhood Education to Primary Six, the language of instruction will be in the mother tongue or the language of the immediate community.
The policy aims to promote indigenous languages, recognise their equal status, and improve early childhood learning outcomes, while English remains the official language used in later education and formal settings.

“Speaking at the conference, Alausa said English is now the language of instruction in Nigerian schools from primary to tertiary levels.

“HURIWA said it is a lie from the pit of hell to blame the mass failures of some of our Nigerian children in some public exams as a result of being taught in their mother tongue just as HURIWA dismissed the reason as spurious and unscientific going by the fact that there is no statistics good enough to attribute any poor performance of students in public exams to the use of mother tongue in educating them since the use of mother tongue in teaching Nigerian children is applicable in less than 6% of the public and private schools in Nigeria. ”

HURIWA therefore challenged the Minister of Education to show Nigerians proof of the states where mother tongue as the teaching language has been in use and then correlate this to the so-called poor performance in public schools.

” By the way, the framing of the policy is to cover only children in early education.

“As far as we are concerned, the states where mother tongue is used to teach children in their early education are very few and far between, so the statistics relied upon to nullify the policy that is not even widely applicable yet are therefore faulty and fraudulent. ”

HURIWA asked the minister to cover his face in shame for saying that the decision to cancel the policy was based on extensive data analysis and evidence showing that the use of the mother tongue as the primary medium of instruction had negatively impacted learning outcomes in several parts of the country, because this statement lacks verifiable evidence to prove.

“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 this mother tongue in an over-subscribed manner.
“This is about evidence-based governance. English now stands as the medium of instruction from the pre-primary, primary, junior secondary, senior secondary, and to the tertiary education level.”
“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,” the education minister maintained.

According to him, data gathered from schools across the country revealed that students taught primarily in indigenous languages recorded higher failure rates
rates in national examinations and struggled with basic English comprehension.
“The national policy on language has been cancelled. English now stands as the medium of instruction across all levels of education,” he declared.

HURIWA pointed out that the cancellation of the use of mother tongue policy in the education of Nigerian children in their early years was motivated by COLONIAL MENTALITY AND INFERIORITY COMPLEX afflicting the officials of the ministry of Education and his technical staff who manufactured fake statistics to cancel the mother tongue policy in education of children which has the potency of transforming our educational, scientific, cultural and developmental advancements of our children.

“Children and adults in places like France, Belgium, China, South Korea, Japan, amongst many other advanced societies, are educated in their mother tongue, and these students are excelling in the sciences and in the information technology fields. So why is the Nigerian case different? Why is the education minister afraid of educating our kids in their mother tongue just as kids of China, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Franc,e and several others are doing successfully?”