Nigeria cancels mother-tongue teaching in primary schools and reverts to English

NIGERIA: The Nigerian government has announced it is cancelling a controversial policy that mandated the use of indigenous languages for teaching in the earliest years of schooling instead of English.

Education Minister Tunji Alausa said the programme, introduced just three years ago, had failed to deliver and was being scrapped with immediate effect.

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Instead, English will be reinstated as the medium of instruction from pre-primary levels through to university.

The now-defunct programme was launched by former Education Minister Adamu Adamu, who had argued that children learnt more effectively in their mother tongue.