Let’s be real for a minute. The Nigerian government and the supposed “regulatory bodies” running our education system just handed the entire country a massive, inexcusable L.
I’m talking about the disastrous move to adopt an English-only curriculum and, worse, deliberately kneecap the teaching of our indigenous languages. If you think this is about “global competitiveness” or “modernization,” you are fundamentally missing the point. This isn’t just a curriculum change; it’s cultural self-sabotage, and honestly, it’s criminal negligence toward the next generation.
The Cluelessness of Prioritizing Colonial Echoes
I have one question for the clowns in the Ministry of Education and the NUC: Who are you working for?
You think pushing English as the only language of instruction—while actively phasing out Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, and every other language that tells us who we are—is progress? Nah. That’s just the predictable, deeply colonial mindset of people who lack original thought.
English is a utility. It’s a useful tool, like Microsoft Excel or WhatsApp. It helps us communicate in the global marketplace. But our indigenous languages? That’s our firmware. That’s the entire operating system that governs how we perceive family, ethics, community, history, and land. When you rip that out, you don’t make us global citizens; you make us hollow shells with an identity crisis. You create a country of people fluent in Shakespeare but mute in their own histories.
The Real-World Fallout: A Generational Mute Button
Forget the fancy language of educational policy. Let’s talk about realism.
This policy ensures that the next generation of Nigerians will have an almost zero link to the knowledge systems and wisdom of their grandparents. Imagine being unable to communicate with the elders who hold the oral history of your community because some clueless bureaucrat in Abuja decided your mother tongue was “surplus to requirements.”
This is not a mere inconvenience; it’s an active form of cultural genocide.
The irony is that every forward-thinking country from China and Japan to Germany—emphasizes literacy in their mother tongue as the foundation for critical thought and intellectual mastery. They use their strong linguistic foundation to interpret and innovate with global knowledge.
Meanwhile, we are busy begging to be fluent in a foreign language that doesn’t capture the nuance of our lived experiences. We are voluntarily giving up the cognitive advantage that bilingualism offers, just to sound more “oyinbo.” It’s ridiculous, and frankly, it shows a deep, systemic insecurity about our own identity.
A Direct Call-Out to the Regulatory Bodies
To the NERDC, the NUC, and every official currently rubber-stamping this disaster: Your mandate is to enrich Nigerian education, not impoverish its culture.
You are failing the Nigerian youth. You are prioritizing shallow political appeasement over the intellectual and cultural heritage of 200 million people.
You cannot build a sustainable, resilient nation if you deliberately eliminate the very language that defines its soul. You are creating future leaders who will be strangers in their own land. Your legacy will be the generation that became mute in their identity. We see the decision, and we are calling you out on this betrayal.
The solution isn’t complicated. We demand a complete, immediate reversal of this policy. Indigenous languages must be treated as mandatory, core subjects not optional extras you drop the second funding gets tight. We need investment in resources, teachers, and curriculum development that celebrates the power of our diverse tongues.
We are not going to stand by and watch you sell our identity for a cheap colonial echo. We will not be the generation that forgets its language.
The time to stop this self-inflicted damage is now. Uncancel our culture.
#CultureCull #IndigenousLanguagesMatter #NigeriaEducation #RotimiOdunaike #GenZVoice #LanguagePolicy #EndColonialMentality
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