Southwest Commissioners of Education meet on Yoruba Language

Commissioners of Education in the Southwest, Kwara and Kogi States will meet in Ibadan on 3 March 2022 to deliberate on the protection, preservation and promotion of Yoruba language. This meeting is being organised by the new Yoruba World Centre, a project launched by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo last November.

This meeting, the first of its kind in recent times, and in Collaboration with Oodua Investment Plc and DAWN Commission, is to discuss extensively on the coming annual Yoruba Language Millionaire Contest among secondary schools in all Yoruba Speaking states, a programme meant for the reclaim of Yoruba youths hooked to foreign ways of life.

To join the Commissioners will be Chairmen of ALGON, and Chairpersons of Committee on education in the Southwest, Kwara and Kogi states houses of Assembly. Also, to attend will be the Group Managing Director of Oodua Investment Plc, the Director General of Dawn Commission and the Coordinator of Yoruba World Centre (as hosts). In attendance will be the President and Secretary of the Yoruba Secondary School Teachers Association, Egbe Akomolede, the President of Yoruba Studies Association (YSAN) and the Managing Director of University Press Limited.

A statement from Yoruba World Centre reveals: “We have gotten in touch with all the commissioners, holding meetings personally with some of them, and they are so glad to have a meeting where such promotion of the Yoruba language will be discussed in order to have it used as a tool for development, nation building, youth empowerment, national unity and peaceful co-existence.

“The meeting is going to serve as a hub for Yoruba language development, where institutional backing shall be given to efforts from scholars and private sectors to the promotion of Yoruba language, re-establishing it as a language of commerce and development.” The statement concluded