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An indigenous language advocate and linguist, Josiah Egbilika, has called on the federal and state governments to prioritize indigenous language development as a national problem.
Egbilika lamented the continuous neglect towards language development from both national and states’ budgets. According to him, there is no way the about 527 languages in Nigeria can be truly developed and properly documented without money.
He pointed out regrettably that the N28.7 trillion budget passed by the President Bola Tinubu-led administration did not cover the development of indigenous languages in Nigeria, adding that “the main reason for this continuous neglect is because government after government has not seen the need to make language development a national issue.
“Unfortunately, the rate at which Nigerian languages are going into extinction is alarming. No language in Nigeria is spared from being extinct if serious and drastic measures are not taken,” he said.
Egbilika pointed out that “if our languages go into extinction, the nation will lose all its cultural heritages and the identity that makes Nigeria unique.”
He called on the federal and state governments to take it as a necessity to prioritize indigenous language development as a form of preserving culture and the people they had sworn to lead.
