POLITICAL IDEOLOGY IN NIGERIAN LANGUAGES FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The paper discusses the ideology of the three major Nigerian Languages using data and information from historical sources, oral tradition, interviews, observation and library research. There have been many researches carried out all over the world on the role of languages in education and interestingly all attest to the fact that no person or nation can perform better socially, politically, economically or educationally in another language outside, the language of his immediate environment. Languages in terms of communication and identification of natural resources using native language in transaction, transaction in terms of business, social life e.g. culture, business in terms of job creation, wealth creation and commerce. The objectives of this paper are: define and identify some of the political ideologies in Nigerian languages, highlights the different forms of their political ideologies and evaluates their political ideologies and identify potential for future development. Also, to identify cultural differences in a geographical setting of political land-scape among ethnicities and to know the importance of political ideology in the process of campaign for electioneering process. The influences of political ideology on Nigerian languages are also examined. The paper concludes that if truly Nigeria want to be a developed country, some of these ideologies such as “scratch my back and I will scratch your back” sit tight” born to rule, sentiment, settlement and zoning which contributes to poor development of the Nigerian languages. Recommendations are made that all Nigerian languages teachers should not give rooms for anybody to intimidate them, and they should not agree for anybody to refer to our languages as a vernacular.