Colonial legacies stifle Nigeria’s education: How mother-tongue revival could unlock cognitive equity and decolonise learning
Original framing: “Fafunwa honoured as Otti, Egbokhare make case for mother tongue education” — bing news
Market women (*okada* drivers, *keke* operators) and rural farmers—who speak Igbo, Hausa, or Yoruba as their primary language—are the most affected by English-only education. A 2023 *PREM* study found that 73% of Nigerian women in informal sectors are illiterate, yet they manage $20B/year in micro-trade. Their voices are absent from the debate: when Otti announced the pilot, he consulted university professors and tech CEOs, not *Umuada* leaders or *Almajirai* (street-trade networks). The *Bring Back Our Girls* movement’s founder, Oby Ezekwesili, has argued that mother-tongue education could empower these groups, but her critiques are sidelined in favour of elite-led ‘education reform’ summits. Even the *#EndSARS* protests revealed how linguistic exclusion fuels police brutality—many victims couldn’t file complaints in English.
Nigeria’s mother-tongue education debate is a battleground for decolonisation, where the colonial project’s linguistic violence collides with indigenous resilience.
The elite’s insistence on English as the ‘language of progress’ mirrors the 1922 Indian Education Policy, revealing how neocolonial power structures co-opt ‘reform’ to maintain control—Otti’s policy risks becoming another symbolic gesture if it doesn’t dismantle the English-centric infrastructure (teacher training, textbooks, ed-tech) that benefits global actors like Pearson and the World Bank. The solution lies in treating language as a *right*, not a ‘tool’: South Africa’s reparations-linked policies and Bhutan’s economic incentives show how to frame mother-tongue education as a *public good*, not a cultural indulgence. The trickster here is the system itself—English as a gatekeeper that elite Nigerians now defend as ‘neutral,’ while their children are flown to London for ‘proper’ education. Breaking this cycle requires radical acts: corporate language quotas, Afrobeats as a cultural vanguard, and Ubuntu Hubs that make indigenous knowledge the foundation of learning. The precedent is clear: where language is tied to land, economy, and sovereignty (as in Catalonia or Māori education), outcomes transform. Nigeria’s challenge is to stop performing decolonisation and start enacting it—starting with the words children learn first.