The National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, will on Saturday, October 20 commence in the Adamawa State capital, Yola, a weekend edition of its Nigerian Indigenous Language Programme (NILP).
Beneficiaries at the Yola Zone, with a lecture hall located at the Ahmadu Ribadu Square in Jimeta, are to be taught Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Fulfude every Saturday and Sunday from the starting date to December 15th, 2018, according to a poster announcing the programme.
The Zonal Coordinator of the programme and Director of NICO, Yola, Mr Adeniyi Oladosu who shed further light on the programme, said registration for it would be this Friday October 19 while lessons will start on Saturday.
“The schedule is Saturday, running between 10 am and 2 pm and on Sunday after church service, from 1pm to 5pm,” Oladosu said, adding that the four languages to be taught: Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and Fulfude would take one hour each every lesson day.
He added that by the end of the programme in December, participants would be expected to be familiar with basic terms in each of the languages, such as terms to do with greetings, buying things in the market, naming common objects, as well as being able generally to weave some words together in comprehensible statements.
Yola, home to the Northeast Zonal headquarters of NICO, is the only centre for the weekend indigenous language teaching programme in the Northeast.
NICO which has ‘Harnessing Culture for National Development’ as its motto, is, from established indications, organizing the language teaching programme in furtherance of its mission which reads, “To consistently spearhead the provision of innovative training, research and documentation of our cultural heritage and assets (including indigenous languages), aimed at making culture the vector for national development.”
Culled from the Nation Newspaper of October 17, 2018