The governor of Ekiti, Kayode Fayemi, on Monday, August 19, banned the use of English language as a means of communication during any traditional events in any part of the state.
We learnt that Fayemi issued the directive in Ado-Ekiti during the state’s first arts and culture stakeholders’ forum adding that it has now become an offence for anyone to communicate in English language during traditional events.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Fayemi said his administration was desirous of promoting arts and culture in the state through Yoruba and Ekiti dialect adding that this would make the step imperative.
The governor, who was represented at the event by the Head of Service (HoS), Deji Ajayi, revealed that the state will hold its festival of arts and culture in December 2019, as part of the ways to boost its economy.
He added that there were empirical statistics and evidence to prove that there was need for the state to enhance the skills and capacities of the youths, since government alone can not solve the issue of endemic unemployment in the system.
“From today, henceforth, the government has banned the speaking of English in any cultural programme. Whoever that will participate in any traditional programme must speak Yoruba or our dialect.
“In the primary school teachers’ recruitment exercise we advertised recently, we wanted to employ 1,100 teachers and over 19,000 had applied on our website.
“This shows that government must develop the skills and capacities of our youths to be able to be on their own,” he said.
He urged the people of the state not to forget to teach their children values that would make Ekiti to remember their heritage and sustain its culture as people.
The governor said that government will build a new traditional rulers’ secretariat for monarchs in the state to make them more active and functional.
we earlier reported that Fayemi said recently that Nigeria can end poverty in 2030, just 11 years away, if the country diligently implements the policies enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).
