Nigeria says it wants primary school teachers to teach in local languages rather than English, which is currently used. But how practical is that in a country where more than 600 different languages are spoken?
Kareem Abiodun Habeebullah, whose mother tongue is Yoruba, was a secondary school student when he was whipped in class for not speaking English.
“Growing up, I struggled to speak English,” he tells the BBC. “There was a certain class,” he says, recalling the incident in 2010. The teacher called him to answer a question and he was at a loss.
“I know the answer, but I can only answer in my mother tongue,” he recalls.
The teacher replied, “No way,” came to where he was standing, and then the beatings began. Corporal punishment is still common in some Nigerian schools, although steps have been taken to eradicate it.
“She punched me [the] cane,” and sternly reminded Mr. Habeebullah that he was not allowed to speak Yoruba in class, he says.
This was not an isolated case, he says, and other students at his school received harsh reprimands for daring to speak Yoruba instead of English.
More than 60 years after gaining independence from Britain, English remains Nigeria’s official language and is used in public institutions such as schools, universities, government agencies and many workplaces.
But the political tide seems to be turning. In November, Minister of Education Adamu Adamu announced the National Language Policy, which stipulates that the first six years of primary education should be taught in children’s native language.
The changes are necessary because students learn better when taught in “their own mother tongue.”
Currently, elementary school children are taught in English, with teachers in certain communities mixing local languages with English to facilitate understanding.
But it’s unclear how the new policy will be implemented because – in a country where the government estimates 625 different languages are spoken and people travel across the country – many Nigerian children live in areas where their native language is not the predominant is local language.
In fact, mother tongue teaching was first proposed as a national policy in the 1970s, but due to difficulties in introducing it in such a linguistically diverse country, it was never implemented as the government now wants to do.
The policy is already meeting with fierce resistance. Despite his own experience, Mr. Habeebullah, who is now a school teacher, doesn’t think teaching the local languages is a good idea.
“If you looked at Nigeria as a country, we have more than 500 languages, which will make implementation very difficult”.
He wonders how classes could be properly taught in a national language when there could be students who speak different languages at home. In his own class at Sabongidda-Ora in southern Edo state, five different languages are spoken, he says — Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Ora and Esan.
Although he is supposed to teach in English, there are times when he needs to explain things in Pidgin English so all students can understand.
“There’s no point in teaching them something they can’t decipher, that would be very wrong.”
“However, I can’t teach the students in their native language,” he points out, because he simply doesn’t know how to speak all the different languages spoken by his students.
Also, they would have a hard time later if they didn’t speak English in elementary school, he adds.
For many middle-class Nigerians, particularly in the south, English is now their first language and some may not speak a local language. This is partly due to interracial marriages and people moving to cities where English is the lingua franca.
Tayo Adeyemo, 46, from Lagos State agrees that it is impractical to educate children in their local language in elementary school.
The national language of Lagos is Yoruba, but as it is the commercial center of the country, people speaking other languages have also moved there and still speak their native language.
“I don’t think it’s a very good idea,” the father of a nine-year-old primary school student told the BBC.
“English has been used for many years. I used English in my elementary school many, many years ago. So if they introduce such a policy now, I don’t see it as something that would work.”
Although English and pidgin are the lingua franca in the ethnically mixed city of Lagos, Education Ministry spokesman Ben Goong confirmed to the BBC that Yoruba would be the language of instruction in the metropolis.
At first glance, the new policy sounds positive because the government is “trying to bring back the culture of local languages,” says Mr Adeyemo.
But his children speak English at home, so he doesn’t think his youngest son would understand lessons in Yoruba: “There’s this growing trend of people speaking more English. It’s the lingua franca anyway,” he says.
It “just seems easier” to speak English at home because it’s the language the kids are taught in school, he says.
Although he would like his son to speak Yoruba, he now feels “it is too little, too late”.
“Unfortunately, you can’t make them understand both languages at the same time.”
For the many Nigerian children who do not speak English at home, being taught a language they may not have understood well from an early age is at a disadvantage at school.
Senior Education Specialist at the World Bank, Dr. Olatunde Adekola told the BBC that the current teaching structure “is letting the kids down”.
Some parents who speak their native language at home complain that their children are “not learning fast enough” in schools, says Dr. Adekola from Nigeria. He blames the language barrier for this – namely the lessons in English.
When the language spoken at home is wildly different from what is taught at school, it creates confusion and a “disconnection,” he says.
It’s not necessarily the school’s job to teach elementary school children to speak English, but to encourage their literacy by teaching them to read and write in their native language — be it Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Pidgin or another Nigerian language, she says he.
“If a school is to be meaningful in Nigeria,” it must “start with the language that children speak to their parents, regardless of where their parents are from.”
dr Adekola adds that the key to the success of the new way of learning lies in how it is put into practice.
Another major stumbling block is that many current teachers simply cannot read and write in a local language to a high enough level to teach students, warns Dr. Adekola.
“If you go to university now, how many teachers are studying bachelor’s degrees or diplomas in education in languages and how to teach children their languages?” he asks.
“So you must first arm the teacher with knowledge of the language so that he is well-equipped in how to teach the children.”
The Minister of Education, Mr Adamu, admitted at the time of the announcement that making the changes would be a challenge. He said it would take “a lot of work to develop materials for teaching and to find teachers” who have knowledge of local languages.
He said the language used in each school should be the language spoken in the local community where the school is located.
“We have 625 languages at the last count and the aim of this policy is to encourage and enhance the cultivation and use of all Nigerian languages,” he added.
The policy is not just limited to teaching Nigeria’s three main national languages - Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo – but once “fully operational” there will also be teaching in hundreds of other languages spoken across the country.
The government says the children will also have the opportunity to learn a second Nigerian language and, at a “certain stage”, receive tuition in a foreign language such as English, French or Arabic.
However, it is not entirely clear when the directive will come into force.
As for Mr Adeyemo, he admits that he wishes his children could speak their local language fluently, even though they speak English to them at home. But he is clear in his reasoning behind that choice.
“English as a lingua franca would always have an advantage”.
Additional reporting by Olivia Ndubuisi in Lagos
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