Strategies for Effective Language Policy for National Development

By

Kawu Bala

kabaaz@gmail.com

 

“The optimal use of African languages is a prerequisite for maximising African creativity and resourcefulness in development activities.”

-          Harare Declaration, Intergovernmental Conference of Ministers on Language Policy in Africa, Harare 20-21 March, 1997.

 

 

       Over the past few years, Nigeria is being confronted by the grim and damning realities of her worsening education standard in the failure ration dished out to States by the two examination bodies. It’s safe now to say that it has become ritual by each passing year; and as a nation there ought to be a fundamental question: What are we going to do? If we are serious, at least we have been alerted by these statistics. Though we are a people that down play the essence of statistics, even statistics coming from our own institutions.

       While two columnists have written to the nation in different ways that “things are not improving [in schooling]”, said Sanusi Abubakar, in Beyond the NECO disaster [Daily Trust, Tuesday, 23 March 2010]; and Sam Nda-Isaiah, in his characteristic, discussing the same result aptly summarised up the effect in his Have We Also Lost The Future [Leadership, Sunday, 21 March 2010] that: “What that mean in plain language” according to Sam “is that nearly all Nigerian kids who sat for the NECO examinations that would determine their future and that of the nation did not acquire enough credits passes to qualify them to higher education”. The nation has no reason but to agree with the columnists’ write-ups: 98 per cent of Nigerian students failed the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination conducted in 2009 and should indeed be a moment for sober reflection!

       Perhaps this is not surprising at all. For one, it has been the very recurrent indices of the growing concern among those who care for the country’s education sector. Things are falling apart in schools. The only surprise is that it is NECO that is trumpeting the statistics and the nation should be more concerned. “Not long ago, the WAEC exams were more difficult” to quote Sanusi again “and NECO was very cheap.” Courtesy of the local free extramural classes that I have been participating annually for students in my local community a lot of students will prepare to pay their fees to write NECO than WAEC. This, however, does not mean that the credibility of the examination body is questioned by the students. I should add that they are both products of statutes, by the way.

       Both WAEC and NECO over years have been ‘forced’ to [in plain language] lower the level of their questions because of what I may say the very fact that students are finding them difficult to pass and those who have been closely reading the annual questions papers will no doubt notice this assertion. Moreso, there is blame-trading largely from the students putting the examination bodies on the defensive. Nigeria has become a nation being faced with yet another dilemma: education has collapsed! Schools have become imperfect institutions―rarely functioning as learning environment conducive going by years of what is glaring; of negligence and irresponsibility and trajectory of complacency and moral lassitude, as critics often say. If there is a sense of shame; this is the nation’s shame and we are failing collectively day by day.

       Interestingly, a specific writing that caught my attention which seems a departure from both what Sam and Sanusi highlighted was Attahiru Mu’azu Gusau’s Strategic for effective language policy for national development [Daily Trust, Monday, 05 April, 2010]. Of course, the writer has attempted to correlate the massive failure with the language inefficiency in the teaching and learning situation. It is, however, not to undermine the importance of the English language being the official language in the country and by extension the medium of instructions in virtually all Nigerian schools, from the primary schools to universities and other higher institutions. “The truth, simply put,” according to Attahiru Gusau “is that amidst all the contributing factors that led to this impasse of recurrent massive failure in examination, the language factor stands out as the most critical.”

       Perfectly the writer has to me understood the centre of the problem; though there are other factors as well and “it is the factor that we choose to deny” reiterated Gusau. Of course, we cannot meaningfully discuss failure in examinations outside the context of the social issues that have made it possible or contributed largely to making it an issue demanding the attention of our policy makers.

       It is an ever-continuing struggle among students that most academic writers say have been alienated in the learning process. I have noticed that since university days as a former editor of a campus journal. It was common if one wanted to feature articles you would have to end up rewriting the articles and affixing the name of the writer at the end.

       I still recall an encounter with a student that I met in the university, who complained to me, as most students often say, that he was given a carry-over and I replied him that he should give me his notebook. I was shocked when he presented the notebook. Surprisingly he had copied his note in transliteration format―converting the English lecture notes that he wrote into “Hausanised” English! You read students’ notice boards be sure to see many types of “Englishes.” It would take like a full page, and again with grammatical errors, for a university student to inform the public that he has lost his key and if found should be sent to so and so room!

       A number of lecturers have spoken in many venues telling us of their concern. Some institutions have also taken drastic steps in addressing this problem. Now institutions conduct “pre-this” and “post-that” all trying to sip from the chaff the “real” students. As a result of the dearth of appreciating the language of instruction, I could remember in the late 80s and early 90s, College of Education Azare had introduced a local book, Bettering English where students newly admitted were taught General English in the first few months before even starting to offer the various courses given to them. Little wonder that the overall performances of students then were among the top in the list of Colleges of Education affiliated to the Ahmadu Bello University. It might not be unconnected, even with the absence of analytical data, that that had helped tremendously.

       Coupled with the above, I remember in 2000 there was massive failure among students after the result of the Bar examinations was released and students, curious as it appeared then had gone hinting the press that they were failed intentionally due to what they said their “reward for demanding their rights from the Law School Management.” In debunking the students’ assertion the then Director-General, Chief J.K. Jegede, SAN, however attributed the failure to English. Chief Jegede had simply responded that rather than go to the press the students should have learned and answered the bar examinations in good English. This same assertion was reiterated at our called to the bar ceremony in January 2001 by Chief J.K. Jegede, SAN who informed the Body of Benchers that he was happy and had seen a sign of improvement that some students in the history of Nigerian Law School had published an English poetry book, Monument: An Anthology of Poems [which this writer happened to be one of the contributors].

       I tried this at length to show that language has always been at the heart of contending argument albeit silently between teachers and students as well as between the various bodies tasked with examining students in Nigeria. The question again is: What is the solution? Is there no clear language policy? Has Nigeria not recognised the importance of indigenous languages as an efficient way of teaching and learning situation in addition to other significant official roles? If the answer to the third question is “yes”; what then is happening to the policy? Do we abandon the English language? And the answer to be honest for this question in my opinion is “No!” But, what policy shall we follow in addressing the impasse since examination failure has now become synonymous with each and every examination written by students across every institution of learning in the country?   

       It is common saying among critics of policies in Africa that “it is one thing to formulate good policies and it is another to implement them.” This would probably be the case of each and every country in the Africa continent. The only difference is the degree because we cannot generalise as policies relate to human society and societies are dynamic and no social factors are the same even though they may be similar.

       The question of strategies for effective language policy for national development does not even arise for Nigeria. It is important to point out here is that there is already a good policy which perhaps is my age mate. What should be emphasised here is the reverse that Nigeria should implement what it has crafted by what seems to the best minds in this area. For, it is one of the best policies despite a number of criticisms as levied by academic writers like E. Nolue Emenanjo and Oladele Awobuluyi in their papers Languages and the National Policy on Education: Implications and Prospect and Language Education in Nigeria: Theory, Policy and Practice.

       At the moment, in the revised edition of the National Policy on Education it is provided that “Government appreciates the importance of language as a means of promoting social interaction and national cohesion; and preserving cultures. Thus every child shall learn the language of the immediate environment. Furthermore in the interest of national unity, it is expedient that every child shall be required to learn one of the three Nigerian languages, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba. [NPE, 2004, Para. 10a]. It further adds that “For smooth interaction with our neighbours, it is desirable for every Nigerian to speak French. Accordingly French shall be the second official language in Nigeria and it shall be compulsory in Primary and Junior Secondary schools but Non-vocational elective at the Senior Secondary School. [NPE 2004, Para 10b]. Apart from what has been cited above, it says on early childhood education that “Government shall ensure that the medium of instruction is principally the mother tongue or the language of the immediate community... [NPE Para. 14c]. Section 55

       It is also essential to quote from the provisions of the 1999 Constitution. Section 55 states that: “The business of the National Assembly shall be conducted in English and in Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba when adequate arrangements have been made therefore”; and of interest is also section 97 which provides in its wisdom that: “The business of a House of Assembly shall be conducted in English, but the House may in addition to English conduct the business in one or more other languages that the house may by resolution approve.”

       As a beneficiary, when Bauchi State started implementing the provisions of the said policy we had then in the early 80s teachers in Yoruba, Igbo and French. I had seen the impact of this initiative; for, when years later I found myself in the South-West for the national service I dusted what I learned. And the mere fact of replying those who asked me and that Yoruba was offered in Bauchi State’s schools surprised many there. Nigeria is not far from getting the right cord at least we are not so bad without guidance and we can still go back and look at the strategies for the effective language policy since it is national development that we are talking about. This should be within the context that ought to be between the “aspiration for a knowledge driven and modern society” and the urgent need to review the impact of our native languages. And gladly this discussions are coming at a time we have found ourselves again trying to chat another common cause for the good of the country.

       What should be emphasised here is that the failure lies in Nigeria’s inability to recognise the document at its disposal or rather the inability to re-examine herself in relation to what steers the country on the face to mass failure in schools’ examinations that structures the configuration of post-independence social crises in our education sector. In other terms, this has exposes the inadequacies of many years of what some African writers termed “post-colonial problems”―problems which by their nature do not spring up until after many years on the path to nationhood.

       This discussion has featured in virtually all post-colonial writings. “It has always been felt by African educationists that the African child’s major learning problem is linguistic [i.e. the inability of the learner to appreciate the language of instruction]”. Instruction is given in a language that is not normally used in his immediate environment, a language which neither the learner nor the teacher understands and uses well enough”, writes Birgit Brock-Utne in LANGUAGE-IN-EDUCATION POLICIES AND PRACTICES IN AFRICA WITH SPECIAL FOCUS ON TANZANIA AND SOUTH AFRICA.  In this writer’s experience who had taught in hundred of classrooms both in east and west Africa is that “Children are being branded as unintelligent when they lack knowledge of the language used in instruction, a language they often hardly hear and seldom use outside of the classroom.”

       This has equally been one of the heated topics that have stir debate and emotions even among African writers and intellectuals.  What does it mean for the learning potential and our march towards the millennium goals? Among the African writers, for example, there had been moved to change cause from writing mainly in the “foreign” languages to indigenous ones and at the forefront there is this Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who “abandoned” English for his native Gikuyu language and has been advocating his stance though been criticised by other writers. Ngugi’s basic argument in two of his books, Writers in Politics and Decolonising the African Mind are largely convincing, and his personal experiences related to how he changed his views about and on the English language have been spelt out persuasively. He said he was trying to create an avenue to pass on information to all and sundry rather than to the elites. 

       In his decision to write and produce in Gikuyu, Ngugi, as he is seen by many, had finally begun to address the natives whose English novels and plays had alienated for quite some time. However, the issue of freedom in the use of any language whether or not as medium of instruction or official language at least has been argued by our Chinua Achebe in his comment [in a talk at West Chester University] that it should be seen as a matter of choice. When criticised for not writing his novels in his native Igbo language Achebe replied that: “The British did not push language into my face while I was growing up.” To Achebe, “There is no point in fighting a language.” And certainly this is never the intention of this write-up and certainly not that of Attahiru Gusau, if readers had really understood him well. I argue again that it is safe to admit that the policy of the Federal Government is clear if we have taken time to read the National Policy on Education.

       Nothing stops States from making use of the indigenous languages to the maximum advantages in schools. So, what will the centre do when we have chosen to play to the gallery―down playing the importance of our native languages and the basic responsibilities towards the provision of quality education as we promised in the slogan education for all? We know how policies work: they need complementary assistance from different players at both individual and public levels looking at the principles of federalism that arguably Nigeria is practicing.

       This is not to exonerate African governments in this fiasco as its relate to massive failure in examinations and the role of native languages which if they have been given prominence could have done wonders in shaping the understanding of the students. We cannot be criticising the effect of foreign languages and at the same time looking down on ours. In 1999, I set out to attend Sudan Week organised by students from Sudan who were then studying at the BUK. I was eager to attend for two reasons: it was probably the first of such events to be organised by them and I had wanted to go and see the much talked about oratorical skills of the Dan Masanin Kano, Dr Yusuf Maitama Sule, who had been invited as the guest speaker.

       I was inside the lecture theatre when Dan Masani started speaking and to the dismay of the audience he started addressing the gathering in his native Hausa language, and guessed what happened. Most of the students who trooped en masse and filled up the theatre started yelling “No!”, “No!!” Realising the students’ notoriety that day, Dan Masani then switched to English and in each of his sentences you could hear the audience’s thunderous claps at times not even allowing Dan Masani to reach the end of his point. So, at the end I was wondering whether or not the audience had understood what the guest speaker said because he had made some historic analysis of the relationship between Azhar in Egypt and a town in northern Nigeria. Our attitude to indigenous languages to say the least has been disastrous and we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

       Take the Ajami writing style which some people yelled that it has been relegated to the doldrums. Tell me something, please: What stop the States where Ajami is being used by a significant number of their population from providing every inch of material support needed for its study and development? So, when the issue of removing of what was termed “Arabic writings” on the naira notes caused so much hot debates you would just but have to listen because aside the reason then given for that decision and the counter arguments.

       Parents take their wards specifically where they could find the kind of school that proud itself a place where a child can easily learn English and speak it like a “foreign chap.” And this has been arguably for quite many years the very reason that many such schools have sprung up like wild fires and are ironically having fatty bank accounts without questioning the substance, if any, and the type of the knowledge being imparted to the leaders of tomorrow in such so-called high-tech, international schools.

       We know, again, the positive contributions made by the NNPC [Northern Nigerian Publishing Company] in the fields of creativity, translation and raising the reading culture of the entire northern region and arguably perhaps the country; that is in addition to other role it played in the development of the northern region’s public service. Up till today, courts forms could still be found translated into the vernaculars which were forms translated by the then Northern Translation Bureau in collaboration with the NNPC. All these institutions are either dead or not functioning at all.

       In other segments, we witnessed also the dearth or comatose state of vernacular newspapers: Gaskiya Ta Fi Kwabo hardly sells like before; Amana, Alkalami and Alfijir had all been buried! To add salt into injury is the fact that good vernacular programmes have all eluded the programming in our television stations. Since the days of the Magana Jari Ce series that were filmed by NTA based on late Abubakar Imam’s magnum opus, Magana Jari Ce, I doubt much if we can boast of any good drama series that were featured on the big screen in local language. Ga Fili Ga Mai Doki came later but since then it is harmless to say the good actors have all died or retired with their knowledge and skills. Same applies to the southern part of the country by the filming of Things Fall Apart and the likes. We now have junk “dramas” in local languages but with “foreign” plots and actors.

       Local languages can do wonders not necessarily in halting the massive failures in examinations but also in solving some of the ethno-religious crisis bedevilling Nigeria. Years back Kano State, for example, was sponsoring some Muslims, natives of Igbo land through a TV programme, Igbo Muslims Calling that was aired in Igbo language. I cannot remember the TV station, but a friend of mind was one of the hosts of the programme, who interestingly I was informed is now a police officer. In the absence of reading any research on the effectiveness or otherwise of that programme it is still good to imagine that Kano has impacted against the “negativity” with which the Igbo community residing in the City have been viewed because the programme was then hosted due to the incessant ethno-religious crisis that have been occurring in Kano leading to the wanton destruction of properties and loss of lives in the 90s. At least it has been long since we heard of killings in Kano [and we pray that it continue even longer]. It could be as a result of the impacts of such programmes the Kano Government had embarked upon. So, we have now seen how indigenous language could be used effectively by the policy makers and do some magic to complement the work of the much often criticised security organisations in Nigeria and this should be carried further particularly in these most trying times.     

       The question, however, that arise as to whether or not we are giving adequate attention to this issue of language as impediment to effective learning and whether we are ready to continue using it as I stated above as an instrument of social cohesion and stability. Against this backdrop then we should call our policy makers and those who are charged with implementation to appreciate the disease afflicting the various social factors that make our institutions to keep on malfunctioning. That is why a lot of good things have eluded us as a nation. This examination failure has been the result of compounding issues and certainly it is not of recent years. It is here that we should see the dilemma of a nation that wants to catch up without however making the necessary foundation. Africa countries can best be said to be countries that have found themselves at crossroads; neither proficient in the foreign languages they have embraced religiously and nor ready to develop their native languages that are on the verge of extinction on the face of the earth.

       The process of modernisation or any national goal for that matter is more organic to the language pursuit. Professor Ali Mazrui has observed that: “… no country has ascended to a first rank technological and economic power by excessive dependence on foreign languages. Japan rose to dazzling industrial heights by scientificating the Japanese language and making it the medium of its own industrialisation…Can Africa ever take-off technologically if it remains so overwhelmingly dependent on European languages for discourse on advanced learning? Can Africa look to the future if it is not adequately sensitive to the cultural past?” Where body of knowledge is a different language it would be difficult for a learner to grasp it easily. There are numerous countries to cite: China, Japan, Turkey, Russia, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. It can be argued they all have advanced due to their policies that knowledge be taught in the local languages.   

       Nation building is a long and complex business. Nigeria and African countries by extension are products of a history, a history that has changed many things; of colonialism and its relics. As Aimé Césaire said in Culture and Colonisation, “Wherever colonisation occurs, native culture begins to wither. And among the ruins there spring up not a culture, but a kind of subculture, a subculture that, because it is condemned to remain marginal as regards the European culture and to the province of a small group…” Yes, those who have learned English have learned it and the subsequent generation will keep on groping with the realities of constant failure. The “perpetuation of backwardness” is no excuse. It can be reversed.

       So where does all these statistics leave us in a discussion of current results released by WAEC and NECO. In this search for a new linguistic order Nigeria is not starting afresh; there is something on the ground to continue. Are we going to continue with the usual “street talks” because we are good at passing the moment? Social function of our schools which began with the colonialists’ curriculum development “to produce men and women with the standards of public service and capacity for leadership which self rule requires” as stated by Eric Ashby in his book, African Universities and Western Tradition cannot by all realities be guaranteed. Because even this social function cannot be of certain whether our schools are capable of providing. In a discussion few years ago, a director in one of the Federal Ministries lamented to me that: “It is unfortunate that nowadays a university graduate cannot even write a memo.”   

       That stated, however, “….it would seem that all the problems which man faces on the subject of man” according to Franz Fanon “can be reduced to this one question.” “Have I not, because of what I have done or failed to do contributed to an impoverishment of human reality?”” There is no reason for the wheel to stop moving. African countries virtually have crises from all fronts you name them.

       It is evident that the western companies have understood the need to pass on their products to the markets of third world countries and have taken the challenge posed by languages and they now localise and hence you now have Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson various Ipods, computers and their software in various African languages!

       In the international community this issue has been well appreciated. In the 1990s there was for example a national debate about the quality of Polish schools as disconnected from real life, non-functional, engaging in encyclopaedic-like teaching, and ignoring the interest of learning. They then emphasised teaching in the mother tongue. The world has lots of Polish expatriates working with their mother-tongues. We have in the country medical personnel from Egypt who studied in Arabic and most of what these guys need is only interpreters and that does not make them what they are. Few years ago, we had Chinese engineers who were contracted to resuscitate our ailing railway lines and it is their languages they speak but he engineering is of standard.

       The United Nations is the global body and the world rally behind it in virtually every time of disaster and crisis in recent history; its official documents, proceedings have recognised diversity and browse its website you get a catalogue of vital information mostly translated into Chinese, French, Arabic, Spanish, English, etc. Further down home, we have ECOWAS and the story is the same. At least the rationale is that every good message should be passed across and to the understanding of all and sundry. Same if you check the White House’s website: many information about and on Obama, including his famous speeches have been rendered into some popular global languages. They are not concern about the medium but the right thing understood by the audience. And that should be the very essence of every information be it governmental or for instruction.

       The right to education is a basic right guaranteed in many international treaties and declarations. The Harare Declaration as quoted at the beginning of this write-up speaks volume; for, this language lapses has been spotted by the then African Ministers responsible for language policies. Even if for a bit we should be more concerned with some of our indigenous languages that are on the verge of extinction. There are threats to even the bigger native languages: Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. Meaning of some words in Hausa, for example, could only found in the dictionaries. Urban speakers of the language now dictate the tune coupled with the uncontrollable appearance of countless “market literatures” flooding homes and schools! 

       Agreed, there are logistic and conceptual problems in the teaching of indigenous languages in schools; for even the policy discussed herein to some it need clarifications in a number of areas. There is lack of pedagogical materials and dearth of trained language teachers all through the system and the question of adequate and judicious spending of funds for implementation will now crop in, among others. We come to equally the dilemma of “it is my language, not his” but this should not arise if teachers, government officials, writers and school administrators and what have you realise the centrality of the problems at hand.

       The statistics of the examination failures are real and to achieve success in education, we need to achieve success in the language of instruction. This should be the answer to the stumbling blocks in Nigeria’s march to sustainable development in education. We will then be talking of policy and practice to ensure a rethink in our approach to indigenous languages and constructing it as integral part of the economic development of the nation.

 

 

* Kawu Bala, is a magistrate and is currently serving the Government of Belize, Central America, under the Federal Government’s Technical Aid Programme. He can be reached at kabaaz@gmail.com