A University of Calabar lecturer, Prof Bassey Okon, has stated that a conscious approach at implementing a national indigenous languages policy would help drive the nation’s corporate existence.
Prof Bassey Okon
Okon is a scholar of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages in the department of linguistics and communication studies, University of Calabar, (UNICAL)
Speaking at the University of Calabar 115th Inaugural Lecture with the title, “Language, Culture and Communication: the Societal Triumvirate,” Okon, an erudite scholar in the department of linguistics and communication studies, said such policy would make it mandatory for Nigeria’s mode of communication to be modeled in such a way that the indigenous languages would be used for training and constructing its social realities.
Quoting a language expert, Prof. Baruti Kopano, Okon said Nigerians must learn to speak their native language to their children or watch it die within the next 20 years.
According to her, looking down on your relatives who speak your native language because you speak English was stupid because it was like being proud of borrowed clothes.
“Language provides the thread with which the fabric of society is woven; Therefore, the finer and enduring the language, the better for the society and the stronger the hold for its continued existence.
“Some linguists say that Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba languages are endangered in one way or the other, how much more the other Nigerian languages. This portends that the culture of the people will also go extinct since language is the vehicle for the transmission of culture,” she said.
Speaking further, Okon called on all Nigerians to contribute to the survival of Nigeria’s languages and cultures as it should not be left to linguists and the government alone.
She commended the Federal Government for coming out with a draft in which it stated that all its 520 languages (ethnologue 2023) are national treasure, appealing to worship centres to encourage use of indigenous Nigerian languages during services and for the languages to be taught in schools with the development of orthography to sustain the nation’s heritage.
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