Language education

Language Education In
Nigeria
LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN NIGERIA: THEORY,
POLICY AND PRACTICE - Oladele Awobuluyi
INTRODUCTION
Natural language has many unique properties
among which is that it plays dual role in most
known formal educational systems. Thus it features,
on the one hand, as a subject on the school
curriculum, and accordingly permits one to talk of
Language Education in much the same way that one
would talk of Physics Education, Science Education,
Economics Education, etc. On the other hand and
completely unlike any of the other subjects on the
curriculum, it also serves all over the world as the
medium of instruction in all subjects, including
itself. This latter role of it is fully captured under the
title of Language in Education. Thus, Language
Education and Language in Education refer to the
two distinct roles that natural language plays in
Education. Only the former of these two roles will
be touched upon in the present discussion.
Early Efforts in Language Education
Formal Western type education was introduced into
the country by Christian Missionaries just before the
middle of the nineteenth century. For about four
decades after that initial date, both the nature and
main thrust of Language Education in the country
were completely left to those missionaries to
decide (Taiwo 1980: 10 - 11; Fafunwa 1974:92).
And given the well-known belief of most such
missionaries, first, that the African child was best
taught in his native language (Hair 1967:6), and,
second, that the interests of Christianity would best
be served by actually propagating that religion in
indigenous languages, it is not at all surprising that
the teaching and learning of indigenous languages
received much genuine attention in those early days
of Western type education in the country.
But not everybody liked or approved of the products
of such a system of education. Quite the contrary;
members of the then elite were widely of the view
that the people turned out under that system of
education were not well enough suited to the job
market of those days, whose unsatisfied needs were
for persons with training in English rather than in the
indigenous languages (Taiwo 1980:11). Influenced
perhaps only in part by such views, the governments
in the country began as from the early 1980's
gradually to intervene in Education of the country
with a view to according English a lot more
prominence in it. Over time, that policy succeeded
so well that interest in language education in the
country shifted substantially away from the
indigenous languages towards English, the language
of the colonial masters. Proof of this was that, first,
pupils and their parents gradually formed the
opinion, which is regrettably still widely held even
today, that it was financially more rewarding to
study English than any of the indigenous languages;
second, certification became conditional upon
passing English; and, finally, the various
governments in the country from the colonial times
till well past the attainment of political
independence in 1960 rarely felt that they had any
duty to promote the study of the indigenous
languages whereas
they considered themselves obliged to encourage
and even enforce the study of English.
Luckily for the indigenous languages, however, the
realities of the situation then, as now, were such
that the teaching of the indigenous few school
children, if any at all, in those days spoke any
English before actually entering school. Such
children therefore had willy-nilly to be instructed in
the medium of their mother-tongues until they had
gained enough proficiency in English by their fourth,
fifth or even sixth year in school to be able to
receive all or most formal instruction in it. But even
up to this stage the mother-tongue existed as an
optional subject on the curriculum, particularly in
the case of those languages like Efik, Hausa, Igbo,
and Yoruba that were lucky enough not only to have
been reduced to writing but to also have sufficient
reading materials both sacred and secular for use in
teaching school children.
The Birth of National Policy on Language Education
Not only have some indigenous languages thus
been taught in schools since formal Western type
education was first introduced into the country, after
the attainment of political independence in 1960,
the wisdom of giving English so much importance
in Government and Education also began gradually
to be questioned. Thus, some people felt, and
openly canvassed in Parliament for English to be
replaced as official language by one of our
indigenous languages some twenty years after
independence (Bamgbose 1976:12 - 13). Others
who were particularly worried by the problem most
people in the country actually have in understanding
English and communicating well in it, advised that
more effort should be put into the teaching of the
major indigenous languages to enable them to
serve as an alternative to English as official means
of communication in Government and Business
(Osaji 1979: 159 quoting the White Paper on the
Udoji Report).
The overall effect of suggestions and pressures of
this kind was to bring about an important shift in
the attitude of the Government, particularly at the
Federal level, to the indigenous languages. The
shift took, to begin with, the form of an admission
by Government of what had long been known to
linguists and anthropologists, namely, that a
language is simultaneously a vehicle for a people's
culture and a means of maintaining and indefinitely
preserving that culture. The implication of this,
which Government came to see and appreciate, is
that if we are not ultimately to lose our national
identity together with our rich indigenous cultures,
then we must begin to pay more attention to the
teaching of our indigenous languages. In addition to
seeing the relationship between language and
culture, the Government also came to see the
indigenous languages more clearly for what they
had all along been, viz, a veritable and practical
means of communication, some of which could very
easily be harnessed for effecting national
integration, a matter of paramount importance for a
country still struggling to consolidate its
independence.
What with these considerations, made somewhat
explicit in Section 1, paragraph 8 of NPE (See
below), the Federal Government began from the late
1970's onward to take official interest in, and make
policy pronouncements on the teaching of the
indigenous languages, instead of concerning itself
solely with English as hitherto. Thus, in an official
document first published in 1977, revised in 1981,
and titled Federal Republic of Nigeria National
Policy on Education (NPE), the Federal Government
for the first time laid it down as a policy for the
whole country that:
(a) in primary School, which lasts six years, each
child must study two languages, namely:
(i) his mother-tongue (if available for study) or an
indigenous language of wider communication in his
area of domicile, and
(ii) English language;
(b) in Junior Secondary School (JSS), which is of
three years' duration, the child must study three
languages, viz:
(i) his mother-tongue (if available for study) or an
indigenous language of wider communication in his
area of domicile,
(ii) English language, and
(iii) just any one of the three major indigenous
language in the country, namely, Hausa, Igbo, and
Yoruba, provided the Language chosen is distinct
from the child's mother-tongue;
(c) in Senior Secondary School (SSS), which also
lasts three years, the child must study two
languages, viz:
(i) an indigenous language, and
(ii) English language.
French and Arabic exist under the policy as
language options at both the Junior and Senior
Secondary School levels.
No specific prescriptions are made in the policy
document under reference for language education at
the tertiary level of education, it being felt,
presumably, that the choice of subjects at that high
level will necessarily be determined by the choices
already made at the Primary and Secondary School
levels.
Given what was said earlier, it can be seen that the
teaching of English in the schools is of course not a
new policy initiated by the NPE. Similarly for the
teaching of the indigenous languages, or at least
the teaching of some of them, as mother tongues.
These two types of languages have continuously
featured in the country's schools since the middle
of the nineteenth century. As it actually turns out,
the only innovation in the NPE as far as language
education is concerned is the teaching of the three
major indigenous languages as second languages.
That had never happened before in the country, at
least within the formal school system.
Constitutional Backing for Language Education
The Government as government had and continues
to have inherent power to formulate policies
regarding all aspects of life in the country, including
that of education. But as if to make assurance
doubly sure that the Government's power in this
particular matter is placed well beyond doubt or
dispute, a brand new subsection was written into
that portion of the country's 1989 constitution
dealing with the educational objectives of state
policy. The subsection in question, viz: sub-section
19(4), says simply that "Government shall
encourage the learning of indigenous languages." It
is providentially cast in such general terms as
allows it to be easily read as fully sanctioning
everything the Government had done up to that
point in time in regard to the teaching of the
indigenous languages. Thus, it sanctions the policy
requiring the teaching at the Primary and Junior
Secondary School levels of the child's mother
tongue or, in the alternative, some indigenous
language of wider communication in his place of
domicile. There being nothing specifically said there
to the contrary, it can also be readily construed as
permitting the teaching of the three major
indigenous languages as second languages.
Mother Tongue Teaching
The country is believed to have about four hundred
distinct indigenous languages. As each of the
languages is by definition a mother tongue, in
theory they all qualify to be taught as school
subjects under the NPE policy on language
education in Primary and Junior Secondary Schools.
However, because most of them each have such
small numbers of speakers, it would not appear at
all practical to actually teach them as school
subjects. For precisely this reason, according to
Brann (1977:47), the former National Language
Center, now transformed into the current Language
Development Center (LDC) and placed under the
Nigerian Educational Research and Development
Council (NERDC), in 1976 suggested that, in
addition to the three major languages, viz: Hausa,
Igbo, and Yoruba, only the following nine of the
remaining 387 or so indigenous languages in the
country should be allowed to feature in the
country's formal school system: Edo, Fulfulde,
Ibibio, Idoma, Igala, Ijo, Kanuri, Nupe, and Tiv.
Technically very sound as that suggestion may
actually be, it overlooks or completely ignores the
degree of loyalty some of the so called minority
groups feel towards their respective languages, as a
result of which they appear ready to go to any
length to ensure that such languages are formally
taught to their children in school. One such group is
formed by the Urhobos of Delta State, for whose
language commercially printed Primers and Readers
have existed for about ten years now. Another group
is that of the Ghotuos of Edo State, whose
language, according to Elugbe (1991), is currently
being reduced to writing preparatory to the
production of Primers and Readers for teaching it in
Primary School. Some other groups further afield
that would appear to fall under this category are the
Ebiras of Kogi State, the Gwaris of Niger, Kebbi,
and Kaduna States, and the Jukuns and Kuteps of
Taraba State. The loyalty that members of these
groups feel towards their individual languages,
particularly in the case of the Jukuns and Kuteps, is
so strong that it appears somewhat unlikely that
they would be prepared to give up such languages
altogether and adopt another indigenous language
of wider communication instead. Accordingly, one
would expect that, with time, the number of
indigenous languages featuring in the nation's
schools would rise beyond the twelve suggested by
the former National Language Center.
Whatever the number of such languages may
eventually turn out to be, however, what seems very
clear for now is that only very few of them are
currently being adequately taught. The three major
indigenous languages that have always been taught
in the schools since the second half of the
nineteenth century belong to this small group. Not
only are the three languages fully taught and
examined as mother tongues in Primary and
Secondary Schools, they have for the past twenty or
so years now also been taught and examined as
Single Honours subjects at first and higher degree
levels, particularly in the case of Yoruba and Hausa.
Efik/Ibibio has also long featured as a school
subject. It is, together with the three major
languages, in the very small class of four
indigenous languages examined for several decades
now by the West African Examinations Council
(WAEC), and may by now have started being
examined at Certificate and first degree levels as
well. Edo and Kanuri are currently taught for some
years in Primary School, and are also taught at
Certificate level and as part of first degree
programme, all in an attempt to increase the
number of people that could be employed and
deployed to teach the two languages in Primary
School. The University of Maiduguri has at least on
its books programme for teaching fulfulde at
Certificate level preparatory to the teaching of the
language in Primary School. Similarly, it would
appear, for some of the Rivers State languages
taught at the University of Port-Harcourt.
Other than the above mentioned languages and
perhaps a few others taught at some of the newer
State-owned Colleges of Education, none of the
other indigenous languages in the country are
regularly taught in the nation's schools. The reason
for the this is two-fold. First, only a few of the
languages have enough materials to sustain
teaching them as they really ought to be taught at
any level. Only Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba can at all
be said to satisfy this implied criterion of teaching
materials for Primary and Secondary Schools, and
to varying degrees for the tertiary level also. Efik/
Ibibio would seem to satisfy that same criterion for
Primary and Secondary School levels, but not for
degree level. The remaining indigenous languages
each have a very long way to go yet in this regard,
particularly for those of them that are yet to be
reduced to writing. Second, and once again, only
the three major indigenous languages can actually
boast of enough teachers at all levels, this being
more so for Yoruba than for the other two
languages. While Efik/Ibibio may have teachers fully
trained to teach that language at Primary and
Secondary school levels, it would not appear to
have enough people who could teach it at the
tertiary level.
The Teaching of Indigenous Second Languages
The teaching of the three major indigenous
languages as second languages is faced with both
logistic and conceptual problems. To take the latter
first, the National Policy on Education, as indicated
earlier, requires each school child at the Junior
Secondary School level to study one of those three
languages in addition to his mother tongue.
However, for practical reasons, as also indicated
earlier, many school children cannot actually study
their mother tongues but must study an indigenous
language of wider communication instead in
Primary School as well as at the junior Secondary
School. This being the case, suppose the language
of wider communication that some such children
have to study as their mother tongue or first
language (L1) is one of the three major indigenous
languages, as could well be the case for children in
Bauchi, Plateau, and Kaduna States, for example,
where Hausa would appear to serve as a language
of wider communication, and in parts of Ondo, Edo,
and Kogi States, where Yoruba similarly serves as a
language of wider communication. In that event,
should such children be required to study yet
another major indigenous language as their second
language (L2)? This is an important policy question
to which different answers have been given by
different observers of the scene in the country.
Thus, Bamgbose (1977:23), for example, feels that
such children, by having indigenous language as
their L1 would have satisfied both the letter and the
spirit of Section 1, Paragraph 8 of NPE, which says:
In addition to appreciating the importance of
language in the educational process, and as a
means of preserving the people's culture, the
Government considers it to be in the interest of
national unity that each child should be encouraged
to learn one of the three major languages other than
his own mother-tongue. In this connection, the
Government considers the three major languages in
Nigeria to be Hausa, Ibo, and Yoruba.
Awobuluyi (1966: 17 - 18, 1979: 19; 1991b) on the
other hand is of the opinion
that children of the kind in question would only have
satisfied the letter but not the spirit
of the above quoted NPE language provision. The
spirit of that provision, which derives from the
needs of national unity, would seem to Awobuluyi to
require each school child in the country to be able
to communicate in a major indigenous language
native to some major cultural zone in the country
other than his own. That being the case, a child
who has studied a major indigenous language as
his first language has thereby only been exposed to
his own major cultural zone, and must therefore
study yet another major indigenous language as his
second language in order to fulfil the real spirit of
the language provision in question.
What these two divergent answers clearly reveal is
that a substantial issue of policy requiring urgent
clarification remains concerning the teaching of the
three major languages as second languages.
Yet another relevant issue of policy which has,
however, tentatively unofficially been clarified
concerns the one Nigerian language required to be
studied as a core subject at the Senior Secondary
School level. As NPE regrettably omits to indicate
whether the language should be the child's L1 or
his L2, different states in the country initially tended
to interpret the language provision concerned
differently, to suit their individual purposes or
biases. Later, however, the National Council on
Education (NCE), the highest policy-making body
for Education in the country, ruled that the language
must be the child's L2. But then, as pointed out in
Awobuluyi (1991a), that ruling of the NCE's is
certain to prove very injurious to the growth and
development of the three major languages, as it
would in effect prevent them from being studied as
L1 beyond the Junior Secondary School level.
Similarly for all the other indigenous languages that
qualify to be studied as L1 in the nation's schools.
To avoid this most undesirable consequence,
therefore, it has been suggested and also
recommended to the Government in (Bamgbose and
Akere 1991:3.8) that the single Nigerian language
each child must study as a core subject at the
Senior Secondary School level should be either his
L1 or his L2. An early decision by the Government
on this particular recommendation would completely
eliminate the uncertainty and confusion that have
hitherto both characterised and bedeviled the
teaching of the three major indigenous languages
as L2 in the country's secondary schools.
Lack of suitable pedagogical materials in the form
of bilingual dictionaries and L2 pupils' and teachers'
printed and/or tape-recorded texts, and an acute
inadequacy of suitable trained L2 teachers for the
three major indigenous languages have also
constituted a very major problem militating against
teaching them as L2 in Secondary Schools
throughout the country, so much so that probably
no more than ten percent of such schools actually
currently teach any of the languages as L2, ten or
so years after they should have started being so
taught in all Secondary schools. A very noteworthy
positive step was recently taken in this connection
with the establishment in Aba, Imo State, of the
Institute of Nigerian Languages, whose main
functions, one gathers, are to train L2 teachers and
produce audio-visual materials for teaching the
three major indigenous languages. However, the
Institute, even after becoming fully operational, will
not be able to produce more than a very small
percentage of the teachers actually needed for
teaching the languages in question as L2 throughout
the country. That being the case, it would seem
advisable to involve the conventional universities
also in the project for training L2 teachers for those
languages.
The Teaching of English
English, as indicated much earlier, has for well over
a century now continued to enjoy the pride of place
in the nation's educational system. Thus, whereas
indigenous languages are rarely given more than
three lesson periods a week on the school time-
table, English never has less than five periods, and
may even be given as many as seven or eight
periods particularly in schools that prepare students
for the Oral English examination. Avidly patronised
by commercial publishers,the language enjoys a
profusion of pedagogical materials, and in this
respect contrasts sharply with the indigenous
languages, the vast majority of which lack enough
materials for teaching them as L1 even for a few
years in Primary School.
Nevertheless, the teaching of the language in the
nation's schools has its own problems too, just as
the teaching of the indigenous languages does, as
indicated above. By far the most serious of such
problems has to do with the quality of the teachers
available for teaching the language. Nearly all such
teachers are L2 speakers. Few L2 speakers who
were themselves taught by other L2 speakers who,
in their turn, had learned the language necessarily
imperfectly from other L2 speakers of English in the
nation's schools today have a good enough
command of the written and spoken forms of the
language, particularly the latter, that they could
impart with confidence to their pupils. To make
matters worse still, most such teachers have no
training in Contractive Linguistics and therefore are
unable to understand and consequently devise
effective pedagogical strategies for combating the
mostly mother-tongue induced kinds of learners'
errors that recur in their pupils' written and oral
performances in the language.
Another problem besetting the teaching of English
relates to the books that are available locally in the
language. Although the country has come a long
way in regard to the production of locally written
texts in English, a lot of books particularly for
children nevertheless still have to be imported from
abroad. And as such books are written and meant
for other cultures than ours, one of their glaring
shortcomings as books for the nation's schools is
their cultural inappropriateness.
The teaching and examination syllabuses for the
language in Primary and Secondary Schools would
appear to be over ambitious and therefore
inappropriate for those two levels. Thus, primary
school children being prepared for the Common
Entrance Exam (used for determining admission into
Secondary Schools) are expected to be able to tell,
for instance, what verb forms, whether singular or
plural, the English conjunctions "and" and "as well
as" require, a matter which even most adult native
speakers of English would not know for certain and
would therefore tend to avoid. Similarly, final year
students in Secondary Schools are expected in their
written English to display mastery and control of
various registers, even though their control of the
very basics of that language is so shaky that they
scarcely can produce two to three grammatically
flawless sentences at a time.
While the latter two problems of suitable textual
materials and communicatively appropriate
syllabuses can perhaps easily be solved with hard
work and determination, this is not the case for the
unsatisfactory quality of the teachers of English
available for the nation's schools. Ideally, the
language ought to be taught in the country by its
specially trained native speakers, but given the
current down-turn in the country's economy and the
great demand for such teachers in other parts of the
world such as the Gulf states that can better afford
to pay them, the chances of being able to recruit
those teachers in adequate numbers for the nation's
schools are nil. Accordingly, the possibility of
effecting appreciable improvement in the quality of
the English spoken in the country as a whole would
appear very remote indeed.
The Teaching of French and Arabic
Although French and Arabic are elective subjects on
the Secondary School Curriculum, both Junior and
Senior, the Government is fully aware of the
problems that are sure to attend the teaching of
both languages in the nation's schools, seeing that
they are foreign languages for which pupils wilt not
readily find models to interact with on a daily basis.
Accordingly, it has now established two Special
language villages, one for Arabic in the north-east
of the country, and another for French in the South-
West, where students can, over periods ranging
from six months to one whole year, experience full
immersion in those two languages.
This approach to the teaching of French and Arabic
has the unexpected benefit of pointing at or
highlighting what would appear to be a fundamental
fallacy in the teaching of English, namely, the
assumption that the language is a second rather
than a foreign language in Nigeria. As long as this
assumption continues to hold sway, with the result
that English is not seen as a foreign language and
taught as such, the very low level of proficiency
attained in it by teachers and necessarily by their
pupils also will persist in the nation's school
system.
CONCLUSION
A comparison between the present state of
language education in the country and its state, say,
at the turn of the last century is certain to show that
much progress has been made in the intervening
period. The purpose of highlighting the many
problems currently besetting particularly the
teaching of English and the indigenous languages in
the nation's school system is not to deny that
progress, which would be an intellectually dishonest
thing to do. Rather it is to lay the basis for further
or future progress in that order and at the same
time provide a sort of reference point against which
to meet or assess such progress.
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