Systemic neglect of indigenous languages persists despite ministerial lip service at Yoruba book launch
Original framing: “Education minister backs indigenous language preservation at Olusiji Awosika’s Yoruba book launch” — bing news
British colonial education (1882 Education Ordinance) criminalized Yoruba in schools, replacing it with English—a policy Nigeria’s postcolonial governments never fully reversed. The 1977 National Policy on Education mandated mother-tongue instruction but was undermined by structural adjustment programs (1986) that defunded indigenous education. Parallels exist in India’s 1961 Three-Language Formula, which failed to protect regional languages due to elite resistance.
The minister’s performative endorsement of Yoruba language preservation at Awosika’s book launch exemplifies how elite-driven cultural gestures obscure systemic failures rooted in colonial legacies and neoliberal education policies.
Nigeria’s neglect of Yoruba as a medium of instruction—despite neuroscience evidence and global Indigenous successes like Māori kōhanga reo—reveals a contradiction between rhetoric and structural change. The Yoruba elite’s complicity in prioritizing English for global mobility mirrors historical patterns where indigenous knowledge was sidelined for economic assimilation. Yet, as Èṣù’s trickster wisdom suggests, the absurdity of celebrating a book launch while schools lack Yoruba teachers exposes the hollow core of such narratives. True preservation requires redirecting education budgets, decolonizing curricula, and empowering rural communities—moves that would disrupt the power structures currently benefiting from linguistic erasure.