Featured Article: Between English and the Mother Tongue_By William Z. Bozimo

A child in Lagos recites the alphabet in flawless English, yet struggles to string a sentence in Yoruba. In Kano, a teenager greets in Hausa but answers exam questions in Queen’s English. In Delta, the laughter of the Urhobos and Isokos is fading gradually, drowned by the insistence of “proper English.” We are raising a generation fluent in the tongue of our colonisers while we are still stammering in the languages of our ancestors.

This is not just a question of language; it is an inquiry of identity. To lose a language is to lose a worldview. Every proverb, every idiom, every rhythm in Igbo, Tiv, Ibibio or Izon carries the doctrine of a people, how they see the sky, how they measure respect and interpret destiny. When we replace those idioms with borrowed phrases, we are not just speaking differently; we are also thinking differently.

We also risk becoming strangers to ourselves. The English language, no doubt, has given us bridges across tribes, borders, and oceans. It is the passport that makes our literature global, from Achebe to Adichie. But the danger of the bridge lies in its potential to replace the village square. If all our local dialects are dismissed and seen as being backward, and only what is foreign is praised as refined, then we are building our futures on borrowed soil.

The tragedy of our schools these days is that there is still punishment for speaking in one's mother tongue, a practice that lingers in recent times. A child fined for speaking Efik at break time learns shame, not fluency. A young boy scolded for slipping into Igala language in class learns silence, not pride. As we are constantly trying to “modernize” ourselves, we have turned our mother tongues into relics. However, all hope is not lost. 

Across the diaspora, Nigerian parents are now rediscovering the urgency of teaching their children their local dialect like Yoruba lullabies and Igbo greetings. Technology is opening new doors like the introduction of podcasts in Hausa, apps teaching Tiv, and social media skit makers reviving Pidgin as the people’s parliament. The mother tongue may be bruised, but it has not been silenced. The task before us is simple but urgent: let English remain our bridge, but let our “local dialect” remain our roots. For a tree without its roots cannot stand, and a nation without memory cannot endure. 

Between the English language and our mother tongue, we must learn balance; so that when our children speak to the world, they do not forget how to also speak to their ancestors.

✍🏽 William Z. Bozimo

Veteran Journalist | Columnist | National Memory Keeper