By Cyriacus Nnaji
Igbo Women Assembly (IWA), a group devoted for the promotion of Igbo language and culture has concluded arrangements to train over 50 teachers to save the language from extinction.
Lolo Nneka Chimezie, a Real Estate Mogul, and President, Igbo Women Assembly, (IWA) made the disclosure at the End of Year Party/Fundraising ceremony which took place at PEFTI Event Centre, Ajao Estate, Lagos State, on December 17, 2023.
She disclosed that the gathering was essentially to discuss Igbo language, adding that IWA has done a lot to promote the language including but not restricted to establishment of Igbo language schools in parts of Lagos. “We gathered here today to talk about Igbo language, because we can see that our language is almost going into extinct; and even Igbo Women Assembly we have been promoting Igbo language by establishing Igbo language schools all over Lagos; we have about five schools in Lagos now, we have in Ijegun, we have in Ikotun, Surulere, Gbagada and Aswani.”
Lolo Chimezie who revealed that the school holds every Saturday also disclosed that the teachers render their service free of charge based on their love for the language. “We have the school every Saturday, but we intend to improve on that; they teach it free of charge although we want them to be paid, so that they would be encouraged, but for now, we are not giving the teachers much encouragement, especially from the parents. However today we can see somebody has taken payment of teachers of a particular school; that is the beauty of this kind of gathering.”
She stated that the major Challenge facing the women in promotion of Igbo language is dearth of Igbo language teachers. “Now we discovered that we have challenges with teachers, we would have established more schools but because we lack teachers, we could not do much. So what we are doing here today is we are launching the training of teachers, we want to train about 50 teachers, you can see we are partnering with professors from the Unilag. Right now we don’t have any student in Igbo Department in Unilag, and that is to tell you how bad it is. So we are trying to call all Igbo people to see how they would join with us to give scholarship to anyone who wants to study Igbo language in the university especially university of Lagos. That is the reason we are here today.”
On how she came with the vision of promotion of Igbo language, Lolo Chimezie said “Someone must start something; something we all know is Igbo language is going, so somebody must start it for others to join. I was so worried that our language is dying , so I started talking to some people, they bought into it, so that is what you are seeing here today.”
She advised parents to speak Igbo to their children, adding that it was wrong for Ndigbo to jettison their language for that of the white man. “If we can speak English and speak our language why do we choose to deny our children their right of their mother tongue? It is their heritage, it is their right, we should give it to them; it is their identity. We should know what would happen to these children if they don’t speak their language. So I am telling parents to make it mandatory in their homes to speak Igbo language.”
Lolo Chimezie maintained that the problem is from the home “Some would say they learnt it in school, I say no, other tribes too, go to school, same school our children attend, they speak their language, so it is from the home, if we speak this language to them at home they would learn I, and we should also know that any language a child learn from one year to three years, that is the language he or she would speak.
“You can see what we are doing, that is why we are calling on our people to support; it is not something one person can do. I have been the one sponsoring this for the past four years, we want people to come out and sponsor us and help us and join hand, every 21th February is United Nation Mother Tongue Day, and we are planning for that. It still costs money, we want them to come out and support us,” she added.
She stated that the federal Government has approved the promotion of mother tongue, but it is the Igbo people that are not taking theirs serious. “The Yorubas are taking their own serious. The Federal Government did not do anything for the Yorubas, they took it upon themselves to promote their language; the same goes to the Hausa, same to parts of South-South. So the government cannot do anything for us, our language should be more important to us than the president.”
Speaking further on collaboration with southeast governors on promotion of Igbo language, she said “We will start doing that now; we would start writing them, not just the governors of southeast, but also great sons and daughters of southeast, to partner with us to promote the language.”
Lolo Chimezie also added her voice to the call for the release of Nnamdi Kanu, who is being detained over his self-government agitation. “Just like everybody is saying he should be released so that we have peace in the southeast. It is as simple as that if they actually want peace in the southeast, they should release the guy.”
