In Nigeria of the three major languages of Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba, the most endangered are the last two. Newswatch investigation revealed that, despite the fact that; Igbo and Yoruba are being promoted in schools, colleges and universities, not all parents and guardians from these ethnic groups consciously make enough efforts to teach their children or wards their mother tongues at home.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, 45, says Yoruba is the most popular African language for Wikipedia, with 29,000 pages. The Swahili Wikipedia version is second among African languages with 23,000. Other African languages on Wikipedia include Afrikaans, Hausa, and Zulu. Speaking in Lagos this week, Wales says his website is branching out from English.

In their paper “Is Yoruba an Endangered Language?” Felix Fabunmi and Akeem Salawu note a conspicuous post-colonial preference for the use of English amongst the Yoruba elite. They describe the “divided personalities” of the elite who fight to “eschew their nativity” as a contributing factor in the demise of the Yoruba language, particularly in Nigeria itself.

Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola has said the establishment of a Yoruba Academy would promote the Yoruba culture and language. He said his administration plans to enact a law that would make it compulsory for every school, both private and public, to include the teaching of Yoruba language in their curriculum.

LAGOS—The Minister of Education has been charged to fully implement the National Policy on Education to develop our indigenous languages in order to fast track its use in schools and at all levels of the society.

Prominent Yoruba leaders have warned that Yoruba language would fade away, unless parents and governments insist on the propagation of the ethnic group’s culture, customs and tradition.

To help secure, protect, and bring back most of the local languages that are going into extinction, Information and Communication Technology researchers at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, last week unveiled the technology through which texts are converted into voice messages in Nigerian indigenous languages by the recipient’s handset.

In furtherance of the objectives of its enabling decree, the National Institute for Cultural Orientation, NICO has commenced its indigenous language programmes aimed at helping Nigerian children to communicate in their mother tongue and adults with spouses from different ethnic backgrounds, the language of their spouses.

She opined that the Yoruba language and other Nigerian indigenous languages were greatly endangered, because parents wallow in the unfortunate notion that speaking English language and compelling the child to eschew vernacular would make such a child master the language: “Parents should speak local languages to their children at home. They should realize that a child who can speak Yoruba can also speak fluent English.”

Unfortunately in Nigeria, there appears to be a gradual decimation of the ability of many children to speak their native language. Many sociologists and indeed Nigerians say that this trend if not checked in time is capable of allowing the rich cultural and linguistic heritage of the nation to go to waste.

Efforts to have a standard orthography for Igbo, Ijo, Hausa and Yoruba languages received a boost on Wednesday when harmonised orthographies for the four languages also spoken in Cameroun, Benin and Niger Republic were launched.