On a warm November morning in Akure, as delegates filed out of the hall after the 69th National Council on Education meeting, a quiet shock settled over Nigeria’s education community.
The Minister of Education, Dr Morufu Olatunji Alausa, had just announced a sweeping reversal: the Federal Government was scrapping the National Language Policy, the 2022 framework that required schools to teach children in their mother tongue from Early Childhood Education to Primary Six. English, he said, would become the sole medium of instruction at all levels.
Within hours, the reverberations were felt from academic circles to community schools. To many, it was not merely a policy shift but a cultural turning point — a move that, if allowed to stand, could reshape the country’s linguistic identity and redefine its educational future.
The Minister’s justification was unequivocal. He linked poor performance in public examinations — WAEC, NECO, JAMB — to regions that had embraced mother tongue instruction “in an over-subscribed manner”. According to him, data over 15 years allegedly showed that teaching young children in indigenous languages had “destroyed education” in parts of the country.
But to Nigeria’s education scholars, linguists, and curriculum experts, the logic did not add up.
Within days, the Nigerian Academy of Education (NAE), a body of the country’s most senior education professionals, convened an emergency nine-member task force. Their mission: to respond — firmly, and with evidence. Their conclusion: the cancellation was “a significant misstep” with consequences far beyond the classroom.
In a policy document made available to The Atlantic Bell and signed by Emeritus Professor Olugbemiro Jegede, and Prof. Chris Chukwurah, President, and Secretary General of the Nigerian Academy of Education, the body condemned the policy of the Federal Government.
A Policy Decades in the Making
The National Language Policy was not a hasty experiment. It was the product of years of collaboration between language experts, researchers, curriculum developers, and policymakers. From its earliest iterations in the 1970s, the policy drew from UNESCO’s recommendation that children begin learning in the language they understand best.
Historically, Nigeria had already tested this model. The Ife Six-Year Primary Project led by education icon Prof. Babs Fafunwa, in the 1970s, demonstrated that children taught in their mother tongue showed stronger cognitive skills and performed better academically — even in English. The Rivers Readers’ Project offered similar evidence. More recently, a six-year dataset from the Obolo Bilingual Education Centre showed superior learning outcomes when instruction occurred in indigenous languages.
These results are not outliers. Researchers from UNESCO to Nigerian scholars such as Fafunwa, Bamgbose, Ubahakwe, and Omamor have long documented the benefits: stronger comprehension, higher classroom participation, better literacy, lower dropout rates and improved national cohesion.
A Faulty Premise?
The NAE argues that the government’s rationale for the reversal collapses under scrutiny.
For one, mother tongue instruction in Nigeria ends at Primary Four. Public examinations occur years later. “Attributing WAEC or NECO failures to early childhood language of instruction is not evidence-based,” the NAE warns.
Secondly, no comprehensive data was publicly presented to support the Minister’s claims. The Academy notes that poor performance in public exams correlates more strongly with structural challenges — teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, lack of learning materials, and underfunding — than with the language of instruction.
And crucially, the policy has never been fully implemented nationwide. How, they ask, can something that scarcely existed be blamed for failure?
A Global Lens
Countries that have successfully lifted literacy rates — from Finland to China, Kenya to Ethiopia — begin education in the mother tongue. Japan’s famed technological rise was built on a foundation of early learning in Japanese. Even in multilingual African nations, early grade reading in local languages remains standard practice.
Nigeria’s sudden departure from this model, the NAE warns, risks isolating the country from global best practice.
Beyond the Classroom: A Cultural Reckoning
For many advocates, the decision is not just pedagogical but existential. Nigeria’s 500-plus languages are more than communication tools; they are vessels of identity, memory, and heritage.
“To discard them at the foundational stage of learning,” one senior member of the Academy says, “is to accelerate their disappearance.”
The Academy’s report frames the cancellation as akin to reopening the wounds of colonialism — a symbolic surrender of linguistic autonomy at a time when many nations are reclaiming it.
A Call for Reversal
In its advisory, the NAE urges the Minister to “reverse the cancellation as a matter of urgency, national pride and national integrity”. Their recommendations are specific:
Reinstate mother tongue instruction through Primary Four.
Invest in teacher training, orthographies, and indigenous learning materials.
Deploy technology to expand access to local language resources.
Carry out data-driven evaluations every ten years instead of abrupt reversals.
Engage parents and communities through nationwide sensitisation campaigns.
The Academy insists that Nigeria’s literacy crisis — including the millions of out-of-school children and non-literate adults — will worsen if English becomes the compulsory medium from the earliest years. Learning in an unfamiliar language, they argue, alienate children, raise anxiety, and push many out of the school system altogether.
A Future on the Line
For now, the policy remains cancelled, though the debate grows louder. Educators, civil society groups, and cultural advocates continue to press for reversal, warning that the implications stretch far beyond pedagogy.
At stake is the cognitive development of Nigeria’s youngest learners. But there is something deeper too — the future of a multilingual nation, the preservation of its cultural heritage, and the question of whether its education system will evolve on its own terms or be shaped by old hierarchies.
“If the policy is allowed to die without rigorous interrogation,” the NAE cautions, “the permanent recolonisation of Nigeria, and the burial of its future and pride, would have been completed.”
For now, Nigeria stands at a crossroads — between the language of its ancestors and the language of its colonial past; between evidence and expedience; between a future built on inclusion, and one that may leave millions behind.
