By Zainab Suleiman Okino
One of the challenges facing education in Nigeria is, among other issues, policy somersaults which, in most cases, come with changes in government, depending on the political party holding power at the centre. Even divisive political issues such as regional conclaves affect national discourse on education. But to subject what ordinarily should be a uniting force, determined by professionals and stakeholders, to frequent changes is to weaken the only thing that can liberate the mind and level the haves with havenots.
Without consistency, robust policy sustainability and functionality spanning decades, progress can only be in fits and starts. When education and educational policy initiatives suffer this fate, the result is reflected in the mismatch between what is taught and what the country needs for advancement and development. The controversies trailing the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa’s old but new pronouncement dropping the use of mother tongue in favour of English for teaching children in the early years fall into this category.
Only three years ago, in 2022, the former Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, under the administration of late President Muhammadu Buhari, began the implementation of a national language policy mandating mother tongue as a medium of instruction in the early years. That policy is now in danger of being jettisoned by the current minister’s unfair assessment of it after only three years.
While presenting the new policy then, Minister Adamu noted that children grasp concepts faster when taught in their mother tongue, in line with data-driven Jolly Phonics and Accelerated Methodologies’ acclaimed logic that “children learn best in a language they understand”. It also builds self-esteem and confidence.
In a country of over 10 million out-of-school children, and many not completing secondary school education, playing politics with policies that affect them is capable of destroying the system and disrupting their lives. Hence, Minister Alausa’s reference to “the ones that adopted this mother tongue in an over-subscribed manner” is condescending, wrong-headed and demeaning.
Without allowing the old concept to properly manifest or be empirically tested, Minister Alausa’s citing of poor performance in WAEC, NECO and JAMB to reverse the three-year policy by fiat is knee-jerk, not well-thought out and not inclusive.
As a matter of fact, there is no correlation between failure in WAEC and NECO and a new programme that has barely impacted anyone. The failure is actually an indictment of the old programme being “smuggled” back. Besides, the cancellation of mother tongue teaching is too abrupt, hasty and not subjected to assessment by early years’ teaching specialists.
Before pronouncing failure on an issue like this, the government should have invested in teacher training, textbooks and other learning materials. Did the Federal Government do this?
“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,” the minister stated. This is far from the reality on the ground and not logical. A policy that was implemented at pre-primary and primary schools three years ago could not have led to failure at these examination bodies. The mother tongue policy, if sustained, would need at least 10 years to be tested by the authorities, starting with those children.
Minister Alausa’s English-only concept is not evidence-based, not experimental, does not take into cognisance cultural identity and preservation, and will ultimately lead to the extinction of many local languages at a time when many are calling for their codification.
Education is on the concurrent legislative list, meaning that both the federal and state governments have jurisdiction and authority over it. A discretionary ministerial declaration seeking to ban an educational strategy that seems to be working in some parts of the country is a constitutional aberration. Without deference to sub-national governments in charge of early years, the minister has no right to deploy new strategies.
As a constitutional matter under both federal and state governments, new policy initiatives should not and cannot be decreed without recourse to the National Assembly. Any new policy programme not well articulated, negotiated and widely consulted among stakeholders at all levels is doomed to fail, as with previous haphazard policy conception and implementation. I wonder if Minister Alausa did this. He should know that policy inconsistency could render education comatose or stagnant.
Contrary to the minister’s poor performance excuse, there is evidence of progress with mother tongue teaching in the last three years. A good example is Kaduna and some other Northern states , where mother tongue multilingual education has witnessed remarkable transformative impact on learners.
According to experts on the subject, an FCDO-funded foundational learning programme conducted in Kaduna, Kano and Jigawa states “has shown significant gains in literacy and numeracy by employing Hausa as the language of instruction in early grades. It provides a strong bridge to English acquisition, disproving the myth that mother tongue education hinders second language learning.”
Another example is the Teaching at the Right Level programme conducted in Kaduna, Kano and Jigawa states, where “the efficacy of TaRL is magnified when delivered in a language the child understands. By assessing and teaching children at their competency level in their mother tongue, learning gaps are closed more rapidly and effectively.”
There are many countries of the world that have made tremendous impact in science and technology without speaking or writing in English. China, Germany, France, India and Saudi Arabia belong to this category, proving that the universe is bigger than the language in which it is thought and studied.
As a former British colony, our forebears, most of whom did not know the English alphabet until the age of seven or eight, ended up excelling in the language of the colonialists. One former technocrat belonging to the first generation of educated people in Kaduna State told how he had a first class in English at a British university. On graduation day, the authorities said to him, “Thank you for teaching us so much of our language.” Yet this man was born to illiterate parents, never saw the four walls of a classroom until he was almost 10, and was obviously taught in his mother tongue at that age. Who says spoken English is everything?
Educationists say a child is capable of understanding at least seven languages. Therefore, instead of expunging local languages from our curriculum, why not use them alongside English to achieve our goals? Let us not get things muddled up. Fluency in English is not equivalent or synonymous with high intelligence quotient, brilliance or success in examinations.
Zainab Suleiman Okino (FNGE) chairs the Blueprint Editorial Board. She is a syndicated columnist and can be reached via zainabokino@gmail.com.
