Yasir Aladodo
Nigeria is such a blessed nation accompanied with 500 distinct languages all identifying a wide variety of cultures. A nation attributed as Giant of Africa owing to her economic buoyancy which attest her to be an emerging market by the World Bank.
We are blessed with everything to live a good and comfortable life but we choose to dance to the tune of alien culture, Nigerians do imitate uncritically, we are good at aping another culture and demeaning our cultural heritage. Westernization triggered the extinction of our cultural heritage.
Our mother tongue has been tagged as vernacular, uttering it attracts a penalty. The level of our language downgrade is being neglected which has made English maintain a prominent position in Nigeria, some parents cultivate a habit of making English the first language for their wards. Such a ward will value the language to his indigenous language.
Education triumphant serves as a training tool which accrue the dominance of English among Nigerians. It is a language of academic field, for one to be academically proficient, his level of English speaking must be standard.
However, some parts of Nigeria deviate from the norms of making English a prominent language. The northern part of Nigeria does not equate the English language with their indigenous language. The position of the English language as a national language remains its stance but they do not imitate other cultures. The value of their language precedes other languages.
The major plight Nigeria is battling is the low status we attributed ourselves to. We see nothing good and attractive in anything we do, the colonial people enjoy our demeaning and take the advantage in controlling our affairs even after attaining independence, the remnant of their culture has superseded our culture. Countries like India are colonized but that didn’t impede their cultural life.