By Ighomuaye Lucky. O
A Member of the House of Representatives, representing Oredo Federal Constituency, Esosa Iyawe, has admonished the Nigerian parents to help preserve their cultural heritage through speaking of their own native language to their children and wards, saying failure to do such, might risk language extinction.
He gave the admonition in Benin while speaking at the cultural orientation and sensitization programme for the senior secondary school students with the theme, “Inspiring Youths With Cultural Heritage”, an event put together by him in collaboration with the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO).
Iyawe, said Nigeria is a country with different cultures and tribes and that this diversity is what has made us very strong and unique.
He said the advent of the modern day technology is almost making the children forget their culture and traditions and that while technology is good, we must not allow it to erode our culture and traditions, hence his introductions of the cultural quiz competition among the school children in his constituency.
According to him “This is the second editions of my tenure. It is about cultural heritage for the youths in Oredo.
“Oredo is a traditional ground and I think, we need to keep the children abreast of their culture so that they can imbibe it and from that, they can have a base for being upright in the community.
“So, this is the thing I do annually, quiz competition, debate, hair dressing, cultural quiz, just to keep them in tune with their culture because now we have all the gen z’s and our culture is almost going into extinction.
“We have to bring it back and with this kind of programme I do annually”, Iyawe said.
The House of Representatives member who donated the sum of N100,000 to the nine schools which participated in the annual quiz competition, said the rationale behind his action is to ensure that the children are caught young and get acquainted with their roots, which is their culture and their traditions.
Newstracktoday reports that the following schools vis-a-vis: Emotan Girls College, Oba Akenzua Secondary School, New Era College, Oredo Girls Secondary School took part in the competition.
Others are Ogbe Secondary School, Iyekogba Secondary School, Edokpolor Grammar School, Edo College and Imaguero Secondary School, respectively.
