Reviving Indigenous Languages in Northern Nigerian Education

Praise Motade Bickersteth

Nigeria’s northern states continue to record the country’s lowest learning outcomes, with millions of children leaving primary school unable to read or solve basic arithmetic problems in any language. A substantial body of evidence, both global and local, points to one preventable cause: the near-total reliance on English as the medium of instruction from the first day of school. It is time for northern governors to adopt, without further delay, a policy of mother-tongue-based early education.
The facts are no longer in dispute. UNESCO’s position paper of 1953, reaffirmed repeatedly that the best medium for teaching young children is their mother tongue. Rigorous experiments in Nigeria itself notably the Ife Six-Year Primary Project (1970–1978) demonstrated that pupils taught initially in Yoruba significantly outperformed their English-medium peers in mathematics, science, social studies and, crucially, English itself by the end of primary school. Comparable results have been recorded in Ethiopia, South Africa, and even in Hausa-medium pilot programmes in Bauchi and Sokoto in the early 2000s.
Yet most northern states still mandate English-only instruction from Primary 1, despite the reality that most pupils arrive at school speaking only Hausa, Kanuri, Fulfulde, or one of the region’s many minority languages. The consequence is predictable: cognitive overload, poor comprehension, high repetition and dropout rates, and a pervasive sense of failure that begins at age six.
This is not an argument for abandoning English. English remains indispensable as the language of higher education, national administration, and global engagement. The goal is bilingual competence, not linguistic isolation. A well-designed transition model to mother tongue as the primary medium up to Primary 3 or 4, with English taught intensively as a subject and gradually introduced as a co-medium will produce children who are confident in both worlds.
The practical obstacles, while real, are surmountable. Textbooks in major northern languages already exist in limited quantities; scaling production is a matter of political will and budget reallocation. Thousands of teachers are native speakers of Hausa, Kanuri, and Fulfulde; short-term retraining in mother-tongue pedagogy would suffice. Private schools that wish to continue full English immersion may do so, but public education which serves the vast majority must prioritise comprehension over prestige.
Parents understandably fear that early mother-tongue instruction will disadvantage their children in a competitive, English-dominated economy. That fear is grounded more in perception than evidence. Countries that have embraced mother-tongue foundations; Vietnam, Malaysia, Finland, consistently rank among the highest performers in international assessments, including in English proficiency.
Northern governors have repeatedly declared education an emergency. Few steps would have more immediate impact than a clear, legislated policy: every child in public primary school shall be taught in the dominant language of his or her community for the first four years, with a structured transition to bilingual instruction thereafter. The federal government should support this shift through targeted funding and the immediate expansion of the National Institute for Nigerian Languages’ textbook development programme.
The children of the north deserve an education that meets them where they are, not one that punishes them for not being born into English-speaking homes. Mother-tongue instruction is not a retreat from modernity; it is the surest foundation for mastering it. The longer we delay, the higher the price an entire generation will pay.
The time for pilot projects and endless committees is over. The evidence is in. The path is clear. Let the north’s children learn first in the languages they already know and watch them soar.

Bickersteth writes from Lagos