Blazing Ideas Limited was established for the advancement and dissemination of African Indigenous Languages with particular emphasis on Nigerian Languages through several interactive media and materials.

The company will design, develop, publish, and distribute globally innovative electronic language learning solutions on handheld devices, memory media cards, and via internet downloads.

As an international quality African-language publishing house and a market and business research firm, Blazing Ideas has license to publish, in electronic format, reference titles, including monolingual dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and various other education and trade publications.

Blazing Ideas is currently in the process of publishing three new titles of Folk Tales stories in three Nigerian languages. Our learning devices are intended to enrich the indigenous language vocabulary of students, readers, and professionals.

The importance of language as a key tool in inspiring, encouraging and promoting thoughts, perception, sentiments and value characteristics of a community cannot be overemphasized. Linguists point out the role of language in creating and conveying culture, and advertisers, politicians and all those trying to influence opinion, use language very carefully to fulfil their aims.

Language is obviously a vital tool. Not only is it a means of communicating thoughts and ideas, but it forges friendships, cultural ties, and economic relationships. Language, of course, is knowledge, and in our world today knowledge is one of the key factors in competitiveness. Brains and knowledge are what create the prosperity and growth we tend to take for granted. In an advanced industrial society in an increasingly interdependent world, the knowledge of other languages becomes indispensable.

Throughout history, many have reflected on the importance of language. For instance, the scholar Benjamin Whorf has noted that language shapes thoughts and emotions, determining one’s perception of reality. John Stuart Mill said that "Language is the light of the mind."  For the linguist Edward Sapir, language is not only a vehicle for the expression of thoughts, perceptions, sentiments, and values characteristic of a community; it also represents a fundamental expression of social identity. Sapir said: "the mere fact of a common speech serves as a peculiar potent symbol of the social solidarity of those who speak the language." In short, language retention helps maintain feelings of cultural kinship.

Here in Nigeria with a population of over 140 million, we are blessed with nine major spoken indigenous languages – Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Efik, Adamawa, Fulfulde, Idoma and Central Kanuri flourishing in a multicultural and linguistically heterogeneous society with currently estimated and catalogued 521 languages. This number includes 510 living languages, two second languages without native/mother-tongue speakers and 9 extinct languages. However, the official language of Nigeria, English, the former colonial language, was chosen to facilitate the cultural and linguistic unity of the country.

Language extinction is not a new phenomenon globally. Only 600 of the 6,000 or so languages in the world are safe from the threat of extinction. One might naturally think that language preservation would be at or near the top of the linguistic agenda, but such is not the case. Language death seems to be largely a third world phenomenon, and it has been notoriously indifferent to cultures not its own. Languages have always died (the estimate cited is 6,000 dead since recorded history began), just as organisms, animate and inanimate, have come and gone over the millennia. Clearly, change is natural. But never before has the rate of extinction undergone such a dramatic upsurge than in the present age of globalization and its concomitant destruction of native habitats and cultures.

With a worldwide number of 6912 living languages, there are about 516 of those languages that are already nearly extinct. Papua New Guinea with 820 living languages is the country with the most languages spoken. Nigeria, on the other hand ranks third (3rd) in the Top 20 countries by number of languages. However, no Nigerian language can be found as oneof the Top 30 Languages by Number of Native Speakers. Mandarin Chinese is the language with the greatest number of native speakers. “Cultures evolve and things change, of course. What is worrisome is not that we have all learned to think in English, but that our education devalues our culture, that we are not taught to write Igbo and that middle-class parents don't much care that their children do not speak their native languages or have a sense of their history”- Chimamanda Adichie On the road to preservation of languages, Nigeria, in an official document first published in 1977, revised in 1981, and titled Federal Republic of Nigeria National Policy on Education (NPE); the Federal Government for the first time laid it down as a policy for the whole country that:

1. In primary School, which lasts six years, each child must study two languages, namely:
1. his mother-tongue (if available for study) or an indigenous language of wider communication in his area of domicile, and
2. English language.

 

2. In Junior Secondary School (JSS), which is of three years' duration, the child must study three languages, viz:
1. his mother-tongue (if available for study) or an indigenous language of wider communication in his area of domicile,
2. English language, and
3. any one of the three major indigenous languages in the country, namely, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, provided the Language chosen is distinct from the child's mother-tongue.

 

3. In Senior Secondary School (SSS), which also lasts three years, the child must study two languages, viz:
1. an indigenous language, and
2. English language.

In the past 20 years, the indigenous languages of Nigeria have all but disappeared. It is no longer compulsory that children take up at least one Nigerian Language which used to be compulsory in the sixties right down to the early nineties. Many languages are no longer actively spoken by the younger members of the language community. Although they may still be able to understand the language, they prefer to speak English.
The advent of so many private schools with school curricula developed to ease children into the foreign system of education particularly the British and American system has further eroded the inclusion of our indigenous languages in a formal system in our primary and secondary schools. The sad result of this has been the creation of the so called “Language clubs” in some of these schools which are created as an option for parents who have a “need” for their children to acquire a basic familiarity with these languages.
The consequence is that these languages will become extinct in the next generation. In fact there are some Nigerian languages that are dying out, nearly extinct (e.g. Holma, a Chadic language spoken in Adamawa State) or have already ceased to exist (e.g. Auyokawa and Teshenanci, two Chadic languages formerly spoken in Jigawa State).
Research has shown that these are the major factors tending to cause language disappearance in Nigeria;

1. Assimilation to larger more powerful groups nearby
2. Assimilation to smaller but culturally dominant groups
3. Assimilation to English, the national language
4. Demographic crises caused by labour migration/urbanism

Further research shows that there is no reading material of a laudable quality in the market to fill this gap. Existing materials are outdated and poorly published making it unappealing for parents and children to buy and the bookstores to display and sell. The same research has however, shown an increasing number of discerning parents who truly understand the inherent values of language as a powerful tool to change the moral ills of the society and to confer an identity on the children and youth of this country. As consumer needs for good quality reading material in indigenous languages have become essential, opportunities arise for indigenous book publishers ready to accommodate this growth and capitalize on the trend