Broken English is nobody’s mother tongue

last updated 8 January 2015

Nigeria

Okoro Theophilus

Nigerians are losing their cultural heritage, and we have only ourselves to blame, said Okoro Theophilus in the Lagos Daily Champion. Sadly, we are not teaching our children indigenous Nigerian languages. The government recently passed a law mandating that children be taught in their mother tongue at least until third grade. But teachers are reporting that for many regions, “pidgin English” has actually “acquired a mother-tongue status.” Parents speak only English at home, hoping to give their kids an advantage. But those good intentions are misguided. The children end up with bad English habits and no knowledge of their tribal tongue. Nigerians should not shrug off this cultural loss. We have to “defend the culture of the people, because once the mind is conquered, the body will follow.” If we allow a foreign society “to colonize us mentally, intellectually, and culturally,” then we are “just slaves.”