Lawmaker task Urhobo on language preservation

Senator Ede Dafinone, who represents Delta Central in the National Assembly, has urged for the preservation of the Urhobo language, encouraging parents to "key into the agenda by teaching their children the Urhobo language to prevent it from becoming extinct shortly."

Dafinone made this request on Saturday during the grand finals of the Urhobo Language Competition, which was founded by the late Senator Pius Ehwerido and is sponsored by Senator Dafinone in partnership with the Urhobo Studies Association of the United States.

The ceremony, held in the 500-capacity Hall of the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun (FUPRE), drew Urhobos from all 24 kingdoms and many sectors of society.

In the highly contentious competition, Onoji Ogheneruona, a student at the Petroleum Training Institute in Effurun, won the Senator Pius Akpor Ehwerido Prize of N500,000, while Miss Izobo Favour and Miss Urhobe Onome won the second and third prizes of N300,000 and N200,000, respectively, and seven other contestants received N100,000 consolation cash prizes.

Senator Dafinone, represented by a former First Deputy President-General of the Urhobo Progress Union, Chief Tuesday Onoge, stressed “the urgent need for the Urhobo nation not to allow its language to die out, language is a people’s identity, and when lost, the people are lost.”

He further emphasised, “This Urhobo language competition is a remarkable initiative. Some of the world’s top scientists learned science in their native languages. For instance, the Japanese and Chinese studied science in their own languages, but in our part of the world, we were punished for speaking our mother tongue when the colonizers arrived.”

Dafinone argued that teaching children in their native language aids better comprehension, stating, “If you teach a child in a foreign language, you first have to teach them the language before you teach the subject. That becomes an obstacle to their learning.”