Group seeks teaching of Urhobo in Delta council

Citing impending extinction of the mother tongue, a socio-cultural club, Agbarha Warri League, has called for the inclusion of Urhobo Language in primary and secondary schools’ curricula in Warri South Local Council of Delta State.

In a statement yesterday at the end of its executive meeting at Igbudu, the foremost Agbarha Kingdom of Warri group urged that the agitation should not be treated with politics or any form of bias.

The League, in the statement signed by its president and secretary, Kingsley Orekevwie and Williams Ope (Jnr), stressed that Urhobo children of Warri origin should not be deprived of their fundamental rights to be taught in their mother tongue as their peers in other local councils across the state.

They pointed out that there is a general feeling that the language was gradually dying even in Delta Central where it is being taught in schools.

The Urhobo club executives noted that the teaching of only Itsekiri Language in schools in Warri South was unjust and oppressive.

“Urhobo and Itsekiri are two different ethnic groups. So our children should not be made to forcefully learn the Itsekiri Language. We see the compulsory learning of the language as a kind of colonialism of which we will no longer accept,” they said.

The group, therefore, appealed to Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, the representative of Warri South II constituency at the Delta State House of Assembly, Chief
Dennis Oghenebukome Omovie, and the leadership of Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) to prevail on the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education to quickly act in that direction.