Societal Perception of Repositioning Childhood Education Through Mother Tongue: Prospects and Challenges in Northwest Nigeria

This paper focuses on prospects and problems of the use of mother tongue as medium of instruction for the whole duration of primary education in the North Western States of Nigeria. The language of instruction is very crucial to education at every level because it serves as the key to learning.  Mother tongue serves as the first language of children. Low trend of enrolment in primary school has been attributed to the use of foreign language of instruction in schools which is contrary to the customs and traditions of the people in the North Western states of Nigeria. Pupils find it difficult to socialize with the English language and do not have a sense of belonging in school. The research intends to examine the prospects and problems of the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction for pupils in North west Nigeria. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The instrument for this study was a self-develop questionnaire titled "Questionnaire on prospects and problems Mother tongue". The population of the study include stakeholders' in the society, which include parents, Guardians, and Teachers, involved in childhood education. A total of 907 participated in the study, 113 parents, 30 Guardian, and 764 Teachers,  Stratified sampling technique was used to select 3 States from 7 North-western states. Which include Katsina, Kebbi, and Sokoto states in North West Nigeria.. Ten (10) metropolitan primary schools were selected from the 3 states using simple random sampling technique. Since there no significant difference between the views of parents, teachers and other stakeholders on the prospects of the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction for pupils in North West Nigeria. It is therefore recommended that  since the prospects of Mother tongue ate inevitable and its challenges are inherent. Teachers, parents and all stakeholders should be more proactive in discharging their professional functions  in  teaching of Mother Tongue and the English language currently during lessons.