We must re-sensitise Nigerians on importance of using native languages, give incentives, says Molefo director

Ayodeji Samuel is the Director of Molefo, an African language school. Alumni of Mayflower Ikenne, Ogun State, Samuel studied law at the University of Surrey and has been a two time council candidate at the London borough of Havering. He joined Molefo in 2022 as a director. In this interview with ADELOWO ADEBUMITI, he warned against cultural misappropriation and its corrosive influence on the downward spiral in the use of Nigerian languages. He stressed the need to re-sensitise Nigerians on the importance of speaking their native languages through a concerted effort in market rebranding. The educationist observed that African languages study and teaching should be given special incentives.

It has been observed by stakeholders that many Africans, particularly Nigerians, are losing grip of their languages, not only on the continent, but also in the diaspora. What is responsible for this?
Africans for centuries have been known to be accommodating of visitors and our inquisitive nature to seek for knowledge of what we do not know, has made us to place a higher value on everything foreign over our natural, God given talents. That, unfortunately, has permeated into our cultural and traditional heritage. We don’t seem to see anything wrong in cultural misappropriation. Our mindset seems to have been conditioned to see everything wrong in what we are and who we are, it is self-hating. We need to start loving ourselves first and appreciating everything about our make-up and that includes our languages.

Knowledge of self and country is very important in the development of any group of people, that would help to evaluate where you were, where you are and adequately plan for where you want to be. For example, in the last 40 years, less than 0.1 per cent of Nigerians can say they have ever been to a museum, maybe one of natural history or cultural/traditional history. All we do is learn about the history of others, European and Arabian heritages, we do this subconsciously through media contents that we consume.

What are the implications of Africans losing mastery of their languages and solely embracing foreign ones?
The greatest injustice to generations yet unborn is for the leaders of today, not to find a way to preserve African languages. A few languages have already gone into extinction, especially in Tanzania. Many have lost a significant percentage of their vocabulary. Swahili is a mixture of Bantu and Arabic, Hausa and Yoruba language is not an exception, and the Igbo language too has its own threat facing it. What we teach our children is what they will pass down to theirs, English only speaking Africans will most definitely pass it to their children and that cycle continues. There are also the economic implications, the Western world has perfected this act, I call this, ‘Teach them your language, sell it to them’, and it helps to facilitate quick and effective sales closure.

We do not want to wake up some day and see our children in all the African nations not being able to speak the language of their forebears. It has gotten worse these days that some youths even take pride in their African language speaking inadequacies and the society encourages it. Some even pretend or want to show off their mastery of foreign languages. The language we speak is a totality of our essence and that’s what defines us and losing that is losing self. We cannot be or pretend to be what we are not.

You recently took over a language school, how do you think we can revive African languages in the modern era?
We need to re-sensitise ourselves to the importance of speaking African languages through a concerted effort in market rebranding of African languages. The English, French and Arabic languages are languages that have successfully done this over the years, and we all bought into it. In modern times, the Chinese have started pushing theirs on the world, when will we Africans start marketing ours.

Communication in the formative years of every new-born should be in their mother tongue. African languages should be made compulsory in all regions they are spoken. Young adults whom we have done disservice to should be apologised to and given the necessary support to learn and speak their language fluently. It is theirs and we should not deny or cut them off that heritage. African languages study and teaching should be given special incentives. I see African language teaching as a rejected stone that would soon become the cornerstone of our development.

Other nationalities are showing interest in learning Nigerian languages, how can native speakers push for some of our languages to be offered as subjects in America and other places to promote wider acceptability?
True, there has been a sudden increase in interest to learning African languages. Western countries decision making process is not driven by emotions, they always analyse the cost and benefits of inclusion. We need to first, make what we have attractive for them to consider inclusion. Swahili language has penetrated so well, helped with the fact that it is over 40 per cent Arabic. Yoruba language too is making inroads due to a large diaspora population and the Yoruba spirituality system, Ghana Twi and Ga can’t be left out as the Ghanaian government in the past 20 years has been promoting their culture, tourism and economy through a positive image campaign, wooing both investors and tourists to Ghana.

Your school is a virtual learning channel, what are its objectives and how is it working on reviving these languages?
‘Molefo’ is principally set up to promote and encourage the speaking of African languages. We do this by teaching and instilling confidence in learners that can be seen in our slogan, ‘African Languages Confidence’. We do conduct our lessons virtually, this way, learners can have access to learning African languages anywhere they are in the world. Our tutors are all native speakers and we do not make it a requirement for tutors to be proficient English speakers. To make African languages accessible to all, we teach learners free for a month, three language sessions weekly, two hours on a weekend and two one-hour sessions weekdays.

How many languages are you focusing on and what is the duration before a learner can reach proficiency?
Presently, we are focusing on the big sub-Saharan languages, Swahili, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Twi and Zulu. There is no conscious effort to exclude other languages as it takes time to develop each languages in terms of teaching resources, competent teachers and training in the use of our teaching technology. We hope to introduce more languages to our offering in the future.

What should governments, schools and other stakeholders do to strengthen mastery and teaching of Nigerian languages?
I will not want to knock the efforts or initiative of the government. Aside government, there are various non-governmental organisations helping to promote further the speaking and teaching in African languages. USAID for instance, has an education section that assists local and state governments in encouraging African languages content by way of speaking and teaching.

The Federal Government, through the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) has done a good job in ensuring Nigerian languages are used as a teaching tool in all local governments in the country. The Commissioner for Education, Lagos State, Mrs Folasade Adefisayo, is one that has persistently emphasised the need for parents to speak a mother tongue with their children. We at Molefo are here tomostly complement the efforts of the government, so that people living outside of Africa can have easy access to learning African languages.