Educationist charges parents to teach their children Igbo

Enugu – An educationist, Mrs Eunice Ani, has charged parents of Igbo extraction to teach their children Igbo Language to avert its extinction.

Eboh, a former staff of Enugu State College of Education Technical, gave the advice in an interview on Friday in Enugu.

She said that Igbo was facing the threat of extinction because many parents had failed to teach their children how to speak the language.

According to her, helping the younger generation to speak Igbo will preserve and promote the peoples’ culture and heritage.

Eboh further said that children who grew up speaking only foreign languages would have a poor grasp of their peoples’ culture and tradition.

She said that Nigeria’s local languages should be protected because language contributed largely to human knowledge and development.

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“When we abandon our language in favour of a more populous, prestigious or economically  viable one, we give up our birthright.

“When a language dies, an irreplaceable intellectual and social wealth of the people also dies, and the larger society’s pool of social and cultural values is diminished,” shes aid.

She said that parents should make it a responsibility to teach their children Igbo so that they could own their identity in the society. [NAN]