Mother-Tongue Education: A Sine-Qua-Non to the Success of the Universal Basic Education (UBE)

Résumé

The acquisitionand ilse of languages  is the most important and effective kl!yto the  storehouse of humandevelopment.   Thoughthe  National Policy Education (NPE,j 988: 14) recomm'endsthat  the medium of instruction primm}' schoolsdlOUld be the mother-tongue initiallyor thelanguage oj the immediate community and,af a. later stage,Fit cannot beregarded as an. innovation.This is because, asfarback as 1925, the colonial administration through the 1925 memorandum on Education in British Tropical Africa realised the need to make the mother-tongue(MT) the mediumof instructionin the early years of the child:s education. The mere adoptionof the colonialeducation policy with all its limitationsin the.National policy.on Educationat a time when effortsarebeing  made  indifferent partsof the world towards revitalising indigenouslanguages  is not helpfitl to our culture, the child, the society and the promotion of mass literacy generally.The successof the "Ife PrimQl)l Education Project"  is a testimony  to the practicability of the use of indigenous languagesas  the  medium ofinstructioninNigerianprimaryschools.The  relative economicand technological development witnessedin Slngapore,  the Philippinesand Malaysiais attributableto the adoptionof the (MT) as medium of instructionin their  primaryschoolsystem.Asaresultof the strategic importance ofthe (MT) in primQl}'education, this paper focuses on the importance ofthe  (MT)  as a veritablemeansofmakinga successoj the Universal BasicEducation (UBE) programme which is due for reappraisal in 2015.