The recent declaration by the Minister of Education Dr Tunji Alausa at a British Council event in Abuja that the federal government policy, which provides for the use of indigenous languages as the medium of instruction in Nigerian basic schools has been outlawed came with little or no surprise. This is because the Minister of State for Education, Dr Suwaiba Ahmad, had nine months earlier flown the kite for this policy when she demanded for the reversal of the National Language Policy (NLP) on mother tongue at an extraordinary meeting of the National Council on Education (NCE) that held in Abuja in February 2025.
Dr Ahmad had argued that “the over 500 languages in Nigeria” was making the implementation of the existing policy complex and difficult; adding that limited instructional materials and textbooks on Nigerian languages was also a factor. However, experts opine that inadequacies in implementation gaps should not justify any calls for the reversal of a national policy.
Speaking further at the British Council event, which held on Wednesday November 12, 2025 to mark this year’s International Conference on Language in Education, Dr Alausa said the decision sprouted from data showing poor academic performance in certain geo-political zones of the country where mother-tongue instruction had been oversubscribed. “Using the mother tongue language in Nigeria for the past 15 years has literally destroyed education in certain regions,” Dr Alausa said.
To understand how Nigeria’s serving ministers of education (Dr Aluasa and Dr Suwaiba) probably got it wrong, there’s need for us to take some history lessons. We read fom history books that Greek science and philosophy prepared the intellectual ground for the scientific revolution of the 17th century in which modern science and technology are fundamentally rooted. Greek is an indigenous language in Greece.
The whole of Greek science couldn’t have reached Europe (the home of the 17th century scientists) without the strategic contributions of Arab translators and scholars who did not only render the works of early Greek philosophers into Arabic but made further scientific and philosophical contributions to the early theories propounded by Greek thinkers and philosophers.
Harun Ar-Rashid under whose reign as Abbasid caliph in the 8th and 9th centuries (786-809CE) founded the House of Wisdom (Bait ul-Hikmah) in Baghdad; attracting scholars from around the world to become the center of research, astronomy, and more translations from Greek, and Persian works into Arabic. It was these Arabized versions of Greek works that reached Latin Europe and stirred up the study of Aristotelian and Platonic theories.
Arabic was the first language of algebra, medicine, chemistry, alchemy and astrology during the Golden Age of Islam (8th-13th centuries CE) until the Mongol sacked the city of Baghdad in 1258CE. Arabic is to the Arabs what Greek was in Greece. Lest we also forget that what was originally transcribed in Greek or translated into Arabic or Persia could as well have been in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, or even Nupe. That was Allah’s choice. Allah (SWT) states in Qur’an 6:124 that, “… Allah best knows where He places His message…”
From Ibn Haytham and Ibn Rushd of the Middle Ages to Elias Corey (a renowned chemist) of modern times, Arabs used their native Arabic language to produce some of the most brilliant inventors in the history of scientific thinking. They made significant advances in mathematics, and trigonometric tables when the English language was not the language of science. It’s pertinent to note that the harmonization of Greek philosophy with Islam was started by al-Kindi, an Arab; continued by al-Farabi, a Turk; and completed in the East by Ibn Sina, a Persian. To discuss the positive contributions of Arab scholars (in their mother tongue) to humanity and European Renaissance goes beyond the space of any newspaper columns.
Countries including Russia, China, Japan, and Malaysia deployed their indigenous languages as the medium of instruction at all levels of learning and knowledge innovations in their respective education systems and used same to develop to the state-of-the-art stage we find them in today’s world of modern science and technology. Dr Alausa’s argument that indigenous Nigerian languages are responsible for students’ mass failure in the WAEC, NECO and NABTEB examinations is far from being an evidence-based assertion. If the use of mother tongue were detrimental in learning, Greek and Arabic languages would never have had great philosophers. By the same token, Chinese and Japanese scientists would never have surpassed the technological achievements of those who studied science through the English medium. To the contrary, even America looks up today to the cutting-edge innovations developed, day after day, by the Chinese.
In furtherance of the provisions of Section 2 (20d) of the existing National Policy on Education (NPE), which states that “the medium of instruction in the primary school shall be the language of the immediate environment for the first three years in monolingual communities,” the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday November 30, 2022 approved mother tongue as a compulsory medium of instruction in the first six years of basic education.
The then education minister, Adamu Adamu, explained that while mother tongue would be used exclusively for the first six years of education, it would be combined with the English language at the junior secondary level. Nonetheless, Adamu observed that the policy would take effect only after government had developed necessary instructional materials.
Amazingly though, the scrapping of the existing policy on mother tongue was approved at the 69th meeting of the NCE, which held in Akure, Ondo State, from November 3 to 7, 2025 without any of the 36 commissioners for education in the country raising a voice against it. One wonders whether these commissioners have educated their respective state governors on the implications of the policy. Besides the 100 plus federal unity colleges, the chunk of basic schools where the policy will take effect are states-owned.
Dr Alausa’s Anglomaniac policy, which accords the English language a home-grown status does not only seek to undermine the hard-earned NLP but further sets the pace to destroy Nigeria’s linguistic legacy. We appreciate the minister of information and national orientation for refusing to seek the reversal of aspects of the NLP that concern indigenous languages in the National Broadcasting Code, or the abrogation of Section 97 of the 1999 constitution on use of mother tongues at plenaries, one wonders why our ministers of education are in a hurry to undo the aspects that pertain to the use of mother tongue in schools. May Allah guide relevant authorities to re-think the new policy on mother tongue, Amin.
