“You taught me language, and my profit on it / Is, I know how to curse” (William Shakespeare: ‘The Tempest’).

The Nigerian government and the Nigerian Academy of Letters are fighting over which language to use in training our kids.

In a recent decision, the government cancelled the language policy which said the first six years of a child’s schooling should be delivered in the language of their local environment. The government probably felt that English is the language of its owner, so, it cancelled the extant policy rooted in the mother-tongue. It has ordered that henceforth English is the sole language of instruction at all levels of education in the country.

William Shakespeare’s fecundity sows seeds in all fields. He has this passage of lamentation in Richard II:

“The language I have learnt these forty years, /My native English, now I must forgo; /And now my tongue’s use is to me no more/ Than an unstringed viol or a harp, /Or like a cunning instrument cased up /Or, being open, put into his hands /That knows no touch to tune the harmony.”

Above, Shakespeare’s character mourns the loss of his voice, his expression, his linguistic identity. His lines embody a metaphor for linguistic helplessness, for mental dislocation, and forced silence. He says the language he mastered as a youth now lies useless; he laments that his tongue is now a useless instrument, an “unstringed viol or a harp” incapable of producing music.

With permission from Shakespeare, I donate that quote to the children of Nigeria. Their “tongue’s use is to (them) no more.” The Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL) issued a warning last Friday about the dangers of reversing the language policy of Nigeria. The language policy, recalled the academy, was carefully designed “to promote mother-tongue-based multilingual education by ensuring that children received instruction in the language of their immediate environment during their first six years of schooling.”

Grandfather of Linguistics, 96-year-old Noam Chomsky, in 2013 delivered a series of lectures on ‘What kind of creature are we?’ The first in the series he entitled ‘What is Language?’ To answer the question, he deploys words and clauses spread over 19 pages. I read him as he says that “language is not sound with meaning but meaning with sound.” More importantly, he draws our attention to the traditional conception of language as “an instrument of thought.” I flow with that.

How I think is how I write. Week after week here, I write what I think. Thinking in Yoruba and writing in English is a pleasant affliction that has been part of me since I learnt to put white chalk on black slate. There has never been a conflict; my early teachers taught me everything in the language I encountered at the dawn of my day. That is why my English speaks Yoruba with all its properties. I listen to it and I like the music – probably because it is my music.

If the government won’t do what is right, parents should brace up and save the future. Read Katherine Reid and her colleagues in their ‘Parents as the first teachers’ published in October 2025. They say “early lexical development predicts later vocabulary, critical literacy skills including reading comprehension and, in turn, academic success.” They add that “because parents are typically their children’s first teachers, some intentionally and actively teach their children new words, while others prefer to expose them to language through rich interactions with the world around them in their daily lives.”

In his ‘Language Learning’ published in February 1970, American philosopher of Language, Gilbert Harman, tells us that “the primary use of language is in thought. Knowing a language is being able to think in it.” Chomsky also writes on what he calls “the fundamental Cartesian insight that use of language has a creative character.” But, is it not true that you cannot innovate in a language you do not fully understand? Professor Babs Fafunwa, in his ‘History of Education in Nigeria’ (1974), says mother tongue is “the first language learnt in the home, the language of the child’s immediate environment, the language in which the child thinks and feels.” Before him and after him, there have been studies after studies which have found that “children who start learning in their mother tongue tend to perform better academically, even upon transitioning to another language later.” (Read ‘Language of Instruction Policy in Nigeria’ by Thelma Ebube Obiakor; read N. Hungi and F.W. Thuku’s ‘Differences in pupil achievement in Kenya: Implications for policy and practice’ (2010).

The Nigerian Academy of Letters, in its complaint signed by its President, Professor Andrew Haruna, condemned the government’s decision on the language policy. According to the academy, dismissing the policy “so glibly, without due regard for expert knowledge and public opinion, is utterly scornful of Nigerians and does not speak well of the government’s respect for evidence-based policymaking.”

In February 1956, China tried doing almost the same thing our government has just done. China toyed with the idea of replacing its Chinese phono-semantic characters with a new thirty-letter Latin alphabet. Chinese nationalists bitterly denounced the initiative as “a declaration of war on China’s cultural heritage.” Read Tao-Tai Hsia’s ‘The Language Revolution in Communist China’ published in the Far Eastern Survey of October, 1956. The fact that the Chinese mandarin is still a language of symbols is proof that commonsense prevailed in 1956.

A child’s first language is the child’s life. When a child acquires the right language at the right age and stage, it develops cognitively well. That is what experts say. But it is not as if we fully obey what our policy says on the language of schooling. We mix, we switch and adapt and we are getting by. But to decree English, the language of our masters, as the sole vehicle of transport is to get the traveller stranded and marooned where footpaths of development meet.

In another piece today, I wrote about Dr Samuel Crowther’s Abeokuta contest of 1860. The man used science to defeat native doctors. The story has deeper implications than a fight over space, pots and plots. It is about props. In drama, prop is that ‘portable’ item which an actor interacts with. When a soldier holds a sword in a fight scene, he is holding a prop. The future belongs to those who master the right props, the real principles that frame the world. Crowther’s props were scientific instruments. His rivals’ props were charms. When Crowther’s controlled explosion roared, the self-proclaimed ‘medicine men’, adorned in costly garments and charms, fled in terror. In their terror and flight, we see loud display collapse before quiet science. The science and the drama and the resultant chaos demonstrate the superiority of calm knowledge over loud, ostentatious power. The moral is that knowledge-based education defeats performance-based traditions. The same principle underlies the National Language Policy: a child’s language of thought is their first prob in class; children must first understand in order to innovate.

With their mother tongues, China and Korea have established themselves as tech world powers. Could they have done that if they flip-flopped as Nigeria has just done with its own policy? A post on the website of the Korean Academy describes the Korean language, Hangugeo, as “a symbol of identity and innovation.” Go beyond websites as I did. Read ‘A History of Korean Science and Technology’ by Jeon Sang-woon, Robert Carrubba, and Lee Sung Kyu. I read in that book of history more than snippets on the “Sciences of Earth and Fire”; more than the chapter that says “Chemistry began with the human manipulation of fire.” It is a history of a people who knew (and know) the place of appropriate language in education and innovation.

French chemical engineer and writer, François Le Lionnais, writes in the January 1969 issue of the journal, ‘Leonardo’ that science is an art. He argues that “there should be a discipline of the aesthetics of science.” At the core of that ‘art’ is language. The drama of 165 years ago in Abeokuta between a doctor fresh from medical training in London, and the native “physicians” who challenged him to a contest of powers, is far more than a colourful historical anecdote. It is a parable about the power of scientific knowledge, the courage of innovation, and how societies either rise by embracing modern learning or stagnate by resisting it.

I earlier spoke about props. Because China got its language policy and education right, its props today are semiconductors, satellites, and supercomputers. Korea’s props are robotics, AI, and global electronics. These countries are cool tech giants because they carefully built their futures by teaching their children in languages that let them internalise principles. We enjoy the products of their sanity and clear-mindedness. We ride their fuel-efficient cars and flaunt their sleek electronics. They built their tech steeze and sense by not climbing their palm trees from the top. They made their children understand the world in their own languages. They standardised their scientific lexicons, they enabled their generations to think, debate, and innovate in their native tongues. Only after then did they introduce English. Check Dali Yang (1990)’s “State and Technological Innovation in China: A Historical Overview, 1949-89”. Check others.

Nigeria, by returning to English-only instruction, is choosing the rustic path where science is mystery. And, you know, a 21st century society where science remains a mystery is a society stranded in yesterday. Without apology to Martin Esslin, author of ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’, his title will be apt as the name of that society.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

The pristine automobile zoomed past us. The noisy announcement of its arrival commanded the attention that its presence demanded. The driver must have been impressed by his ability to steal the moment, still conversations, as people wondered about a new madness in Abuja.

In a split second, the “machine” had faded in the distance, fast like lightning, definitely so fast that it sped into our conversations and owned them.

Add the speed, the other vehicles it missed hitting by inches, and the commotion that its speed spread on the busy road on a busy Thursday afternoon, and the new dangers of an outing in broad daylight increase.

Why such reckless driving? How are they able to compromise safety without consequences? Do the drivers even care for their safety?

“They have money. They have a lot of money,” said the taxi driver. “All you need to have is a lot of money. That’s all.

“When you have the type of money these young people driving these cars have, you can do anything, as you like it. The law respects them.

“Nobody stops them. They are from rich families. If they hit anyone’s car, the victim would be the one to be arrested. It is in our interest to give way once we hear them approaching.

“Look at their cars. They command respect. Police would not stop them. They beat traffic light, endanger other people. Nobody arrests them. They cannot be arrested.

“Their money speaks for them. They have enough money to buy anything. They can buy anyone,” the taxi driver explained, while noting that these “racing cars” were the latest danger on Abuja roads.

Not too long ago, manholes that scrap buyers had taken out the cover was counted as a major danger on Abuja roads. The little time devoted to “missing manholes” gives the impression that the problem has been solved.

Manholes are still there. Vehicles hit them sometimes, lose a tyre or in worse cases people suffer broken limbs. Nobody is really responsible for these issues. Or are there?

“Sometimes they do the racing at night,” the taxi driver steered the conversation back to where he wanted it. “They don’t care about the fact that for months that the streetlights do not work except some places where they think light is important.”

“Do you remember the bike accident that Buhari’s son had?” he asked. “It is from this same racing, overspeeding that they are doing with some special cars. They want to tell people that they have money.”

Taxi driver said he tells everyone to make that type of money. Only money is what is respected. Let’s even call it our national value.

He explained that every Nigerian is busy trying to make that type of money that nobody will oppress him. Many Nigerians, he said, understand that the only thing that matters is money.

Is how you get the money important? He said it no longer mattered. “What does government do for me?,” he asked. “Why should it be important to government how I make my money? Do I ask them how they make their money?”

“What are your own personal values?” I told the taxi driver the question was meant for him. He retorted that his value would not be different from those who have understood the value of money and adopted it as theirs.

The love of money in these ways, the taxi driver concluded, ” was rooted in the belief that governments, elected or appointed, were too selfish to cater for the people on whose behalf they hold the power with which they are aligning national resources to serve their interests.

We have a country where people’s strive for survival is pulling down institutions that can help mould us into “a nation where no one is oppressed.

As the race for money takes centre-stage, we will discover that it is a rat race, which humans are trying to win.

What worsens the setting is that winners of the rat race still think they are human beings. The challenge before us is how to recover our humanity such that we would be humane enough to pull up the weak and small voices that the din of those racing cars give no chance of being heard.

Money cannot be Nigeria’s national value.

Finally…

AT the 2025 Nigerian Guild of Editors Annual Conference that ended Thursday in Abuja, speaker after speaker found ways of copiously splashing “national interest” on any issue discussed. Why has “national interest” become mere words? The hollowness of “national interest” rests on the fact that there must be a nation before “national interest”. With no interests in making a nation out of Nigeria, what we have are personal interests clothed as “national interest”. Today, “national interest” is another elevated deceit.

DOES the Minister of Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Barrister Ezenwo Nyesom Wike hate himself so much that he serially explodes bombs in his own bunker? On Thursday, after he slightly recovered from the shock of his Tuesday’s confrontation with Lieutenant AM Yerima of the Navy, Wike addressed a press conference where he rambled about his cordial relationship with the military. He had no written speech. He was blaming everyone, except himself, for his self-inflicted, from that encounter. What was he doing at a disputed property? Was he a ballliff, there, to serve court papers? Why did Wike not listen to Minister of Defence Bello Matawalle who told him the military was investigating the land? On Friday, a menancing bulldozer that was to pull down the property was removed. People gathered and booed. Wike has a lot to learn about keeping the dignity of the office he occupies even if he thinks he can personally deal without dignity.

BLASTS that shake buildings, frighten children and adults alike, and leave some with hearing challenges for days, have been going on at the 6th Avenue end of Gwarinpa, Abuja, since last month without any explanations or warning to the residents. Some say rocks are being blasted in the course of road construction. The authorities, not even the construction companies, need to tell the public what is happening.

GOVERNMENT agencies should do more to ensure that they provide the services for which they are established. Two agencies – National Youth Service Corps, and Nigeria Immigration Service – were unable to keep their websites running as hundreds of thousands of Nigerians visited to either register for the NYSC orientation or get their details to take examinations for recruitment into the Immigration Service. Both activities were done “online”. Many could not gain access as the system kept faltering. The complaints about the “poor network” persisted for weeks. Trust the system to work promptly to cut off all access when the deadline expires. Can the plight of those caught in the maze be ameliorated?

IN its State of Social Safety Nets in Nigeria (November 2025), the World Bank stated that only 44% of total benefits from government-funded programmes go to poor Nigerians. It blamed poor programme design, weak targeting, and limited coverage for the failure of the programmes.
“Safety nets expenditure is inefficient, with a smaller share of benefits going to the poor,” stated the report. The World Bank warned that Nigeria’s over-dependence on donor funding, which accounted for 60% of safety-net spending between 2015 and 2021makes the programme unsustainable.

FAMILIES of many government officials have maintained a culture of involvement in running governments as if they are their family business. Of course, these illegalities result in corruption that we just complain about. In Gabon, Sylvia Bongo, 62, wife and 33-year-old Noureddin Bongo, son of Ali Bongo, former President of Gabon, were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in absentia. They were taken into custody shortly after the 2023 coup that toppled Ali Bongo, who had ruled Gabon for 14 years. Sylvia and Noureddin were accused of crimes, including embezzlement of public funds and money laundering and assuming the powers of the sick president after Ali suffered a stroke in 2018. They denied the charges. After 20 months in detention, they were transferred to house arrest in May and then flown with Ali Bongo to Angola, which said it had taken the family in “for humanitarian reasons.” They are reportedly in England. More people are going on trial for similar allegations.

ABA State Movement is sustaining its campaign on the creation of Aba State, with historical evidence of the National Assembly in 1983, approving a referendum for the creation of Aba State. The military takeover of 1983 ended that move. Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex socio-cultural organisation of Ndigbo twice, approved the creation of Aba State in 2015 and 2018. Aba State is showcasing its economic viability and the homogeneity of the parts asking for the state. The boundaries of the areas of the proposed Aba State have been unaltered since 1957 when the first proposal was presented to the Willink Commission. Aba State proposed, aside from commerce, industry, indigenous technology, and oil and gas, covers the palm oil belt that was the fulcrum of Eastern Nigeria’s economy.

Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

“Don’t fight Man,” said Lion to his Cub, but the Cub didn’t listen. The Cub went looking for Man.

He saw a Bull. “Are you Man?”

“No, I bear Man’s yoke.”

Next he saw a Horse. “Are you Man?”

“No, Man rides me.”

Then he saw someone splitting logs with wedges: a Man!

“Fight me, Man!” said the Cub.

“I will! But first, help me split this log.”

When the Cub put his paws in the crack, Man knocked out the wedge, trapping the Cub’s paws.

The Cub finally pulled loose and went home with bloody paws. Lesson learnt.

The author of that story is ancient storyteller, Aesop. He is believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Thousands of years, yet his wisdom endures. American writer and writing instructor, Laura Gibbs, curates and retells the stories in uncountable numbers. If you like to fight, read the above story again. It is from Aesop via Gibbs.

When you saw ‘war’ in the headline above, you probably thought I was taking a long excursion into the latest theatre of the absurd: drama starring a minister and a soldier dragging an expensive land in Abuja. No.

There was a Yoruba musician called Ayinla Omowura. He was very popular and was rich and ‘powerful’. One day in May 1980, he drove his Mercedes Benz car to a beer parlour in Abeokuta in hot pursuit of his defected band manager. The jilted big man in a big car wanted back an old motorcycle from the ex-manager. There was a push, then a shove; and a fight. A tumbler, hurled in rage, struck the strongman on the head. The rich musician died in that barroom brawl and was buried that day; his place others took in music, in his hometown, and in his home.

Big people take big risks. Sometimes they drag all of us into their trouble. Home and abroad, tired, retired, unretired, almost all Generals, Colonels, Majors, captains and sergeants and corporals lined up behind a ramrod naval Lieutenant. The drill was scary. Think about this: What do you think would have happened to our country if any of the key actors had suffered what Omowura suffered in that moment of anger and banger? And all because of land; earth which belongs to no one. Even Elephant knows that the earth only lends space to those who walk gently upon it. Fragile Chameleon is asked why he walks gingerly. He answers: “So that the ground will not cave in.”

There is another lesson in power and contest for space, this one pure, carefully recorded history:

One hundred and sixty five years ago, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s son, Dr. Samuel Crowther Junior, had just returned to Abeokuta from medical school in London. Abeokuta’s native doctors who thought themselves ‘physicians’ were hostile to what he brought. They said no to him practising his alien art in their sphere of influence. There was a face-off, followed by a standoff. They said their power was mightier than the power of the foreign medicine man. When iron strikes iron, one must bend. A contest of powers was agreed upon between the two sides.

Details of that war of ‘medicine’ is told by an eyewitness, Robert Campbell, in his ‘A Pilgrimage to My Motherland’ (1861); the story was reproduced a hundred years later by A. H. M. Kirk-Greene in his ‘America in the Niger Valley: A Colonization Centenary’. So, how did the battle go? Listen to Campbell:

“Time was given for preparation on both sides. In the afternoon, the regulars appeared, clothed in their most costly garments, and well provided with orishas or charms attached to all of their persons and dress. In the meantime Mr. Crowther had also prepared to receive them. A table was placed in the middle of the room, and on it a dish in which were a few drops of sulphuric acid, so placed that a slight motion of the table would cause it to flow into a mixture of chlorate of potassa and white sugar. A clock was also in the room, from which a small bird issued every hour, and announced the time by cooing. This was arranged so as to coo while they were present.

“Mr. Crowther then made a brief harangue, and requested them to say who would lead off in the contest. This privilege they accorded to him. The door was closed, the curtains drawn down. All waited in breathless expectation. Presently the bird (in the clock) came out, and to their astonishment cooed twelve times, and suddenly from the midst of the dish burst forth flame and a terrible explosion. The scene that followed was indescribable: one fellow rushed through the window and scampered; another in his consternation took refuge in the bedroom, under the bed, from which he was with difficulty afterwards removed.”

I took the script of that 1860 ‘drama’ to my friend, the scientist. The clock, the cock and the chemistry cocktail. What really happened? My friend said a people that cannot grasp scientific concepts becomes vulnerable to fear and superstition. Dr. Crowther simply staged a drama, essentially a controlled chemical explosion: sulphuric acid (dehydrator and acid catalyst); sugar (fuel), and potassium chlorate (oxidizer). From my friend I learnt that “the mixture reacts violently when combined, producing flame, smoke, and noise.”

Crowther did not shout, boast, or brandish charms and amulets; there was no incantation. No abuse. No insults. He simply applied science; chemistry: sulphuric acid, sugar, and potassium chlorate; an elegant, potent sequence of oxidiser, fuel, and catalyst. With a clock-bird timed to coo and trigger panic, and with a well-placed chemical reaction prepared to ignite and explode, the young doctor used knowledge (not noise) to demonstrate and assert superiority.

Curses, threats and abuse are pollutants. We had more than enough last week. But enough has been said already about the Abuja land war since it unfolded last week. The raw lesson there is that real, unleavened authority easily defeats loud, raw hubris.

Central to the Abuja land drama of last week is anger and the use of language. It may be too late to bend our dry fishes. But, how do we avoid it in the next set of leaders? I end with this 170-year-old quote:

“Do all in your power to teach your children self-government. If a child is passionate, teach him by gentle and patient means to curb his temper. If he is greedy, cultivate liberality in him.

If he is selfish, promote generosity.

If he is sulky, charm him out of it,

by encouraging frank good humor…”(‘How to teach Children’ published in ‘The R. I. Schoolmaster’, Vol. 1, No. 5 JULY, 1855).

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.