Protection and promotion of indigenous Nigerian languages as utility vessels of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS)

Abstract

The Nigerian speech communities during the pre-colonial era were indigenous language speaking communities before English became the official language of Nigeria. At present, English has not only become the dominant language in the indigenous communities, but also the medium of instruction in schools and media. Parents in most homes, even take pride to bring up their children as monolingual speakers of English which they believe their children will need to function effectively in school and even beyond. Also, with the ever increasing urbanization and the influx of people of diverse social backgrounds into cities where the Nigerian indigenous languages were once only spoken, the common language of interaction within the neighborhood is also shifting to English (Ohiri-Aniche 2008). The implication of this is that while English is gaining more grounds and speakers, indigenous Nigerian languages are being used in fewer domains and by fewer people, especially children (Anyanwu 2015) thus, reducing the number of active population of speakers of the indigenous Nigerian languages due to the lack of a virile and robust intergenerational transfer of the languages. This kind of situation is gradually leading some indigenous Nigerian languages into becoming moribund, endangered or even extinct. The extinction of the languages is also a disappearance of valuable sources of linguistic and historical information, anthropological links for social reconstruction and interpretation and the disappearance of the indigenous knowledge systems. The present paper therefore, adds to several other studies in highlighting the importance of the indigenous Nigerian languages in the preservation of indigenous cultural heritage and cultural diversity. It specifically examines how the Nigerian indigenous languages can be protected and promoted as utility vessels of indigenous knowledge systems. The paper notes that this can be achieved by doing a language survey to find out the sociolinguistic facts about the languages, continuous documentation and description of the languages as well developing tools for working on them. The paper concludes by advocating a status reclassification of the languages, the active use of the languages in all spheres of the speech communities where they are spoken and the creation of indigenous Nigerian language databases suitable for archiving.