Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Ibadan, Professor Ayo Bamgbose, has called for the empowerment of African languages to prevent them from going extinct.

According to him, when African languages are empowered, the continued dominance of the English language through its adoption as official language of communication would reduce drastically. 

He was delivering a lecture at a three-day conference on “Empowering African Languages: Challenges and Solutions”, organized by the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, Kwara State University.

Bamgbose noted that African languages are being marginalized in various domains, including education, governance, administration, communication, technology and economy.

He stressed the need to empower African languages through language development, language policy reform, legal status, mother-tongue-based education, among others.

Bamgbose said meaningful development in African continent must involve the participation of majority of the population “and not in an imported official language available only to a few”.

Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor AbdulRasheed Na’Allah, on his part, charged African leaders to make policies that will support and empower the continent’s indigenous languages.

He lamented that despite the fact that the constitution allows lawmakers at the National and state Houses of Assembly to use local languages in plenary, they have not adopted the usage.