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| Dr. Obafemi Hamzat & Olalekan Fabiola |
Lagos State Deputy Governor Dr. Obafemi Hamzat stepped onto the set of Másọ̀yìnbó (often rendered Masoyinbo), the popular Yoruba-language cultural game show, and left with more than a modest cash prize. In the 364th episode hosted by Olalekan Fabilola, Hamzat answered every one of the ten questions but saw his potential ₦1 million, car, and land package reduced to ₦20,000 because of code-switching penalties — the very linguistic habit the programme exists to challenge. Afterwards, he posted a clear message on X: Yoruba is “more than a language. It is part of our identity, history, values and what connects us as a community.”
That statement, paired with photographs from the set, has been widely reported. Yet the appearance itself, and the conversation it reignited, points to something larger than a politician’s cultural outing.
It sits at the intersection of language vitality, urban identity in Africa’s largest megacity, the limits of entertainment-driven revival, and the practical difficulty of keeping an indigenous language fully alive when English dominates classrooms, offices, and social media.
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The Show That Refuses English
Másọ̀yìnbó translates roughly as “Do not speak English.” Created and hosted by Olalekan Maxwell Fabilola (popularly Ọlálékàn), a Yoruba language educator, cultural entrepreneur, and founder of EAYoruba, the show began in 2024 after an earlier iteration under a different name. Contestants face ten progressively harder questions that test vocabulary, proverbs, idioms, numbers, history, and cultural knowledge. Answers must be delivered entirely in Yoruba. Any English word, filler, or code-switch triggers a deduction from the headline prize package. en.wikipedia.org
The format is deliberately unforgiving. Even polite English habits — “sir,” “okay,” “yes” — cost points. The result is both entertaining and revealing.
Celebrities who move fluently between languages in everyday life often struggle under the pressure. Past guests have included Fuji star Saheed Osupa, actress Funke Akindele, rapper Falz, comedian Ali Baba, actor Lateef Adedimeji, activist Omoyele Sowore, and many others. Only a handful have come close to the full prize; a recent historic first full ₦1 million win went to Morenike Adedoyin, a non-Yoruba woman from Delta State’s Kwale area, underscoring that fluency is not confined by ethnicity.
Fabilola has framed the project as more than quiz entertainment. In earlier interviews he emphasised linguistic purity not as rigid traditionalism but as a way to foster pride and full competence: “If you want to learn Yoruba, learn it fully. Don’t dilute it with English.” Proverbs and oral forms, he has noted, carry entire systems of thought and practical wisdom that risk fading when speakers default to English.
Hamzat’s participation fits this pattern. Reports indicate he performed strongly on content but, like most contestants, slipped into mixed usage. During the roughly 40-minute episode he also shared an anecdote about meeting a white woman in New York who teaches Yoruba at a university after studying under the late Alaafin of Oyo — a quiet illustration that interest in the language extends far beyond southwestern Nigeria.
Identity, Infrastructure, and the Lagos Argument
In his post-show remarks, Hamzat linked language preservation directly to the idea of a “greater Lagos.” Progress, he argued, cannot stop at roads, bridges, and public services; it must include people, culture, and shared values. “We must work together to keep our heritage alive for generations to come,” he wrote, while praising Masoyinbo for entertaining and informing audiences “whether in Lagos or anywhere else in the world.”
This framing matters in context. Lagos is Nigeria’s commercial capital and one of the world’s fastest-growing cities. It is also a place of intense linguistic mixing: Yoruba remains the dominant indigenous language, yet English is the language of formal education, government, business, and upward mobility. Many younger Lagosians, even those of Yoruba parentage, report weaker fluency than their parents or grandparents. Code-switching is normal; pure Yoruba discourse in professional or digital spaces is less so.
Hamzat, an engineer by training and the APC’s flagbearer for the 2027 Lagos governorship, is not the first public figure to highlight culture. Yet his appearance arrives amid broader debates about what constitutes authentic representation in a cosmopolitan state. Some online reactions treated the outing in political terms; others saw it simply as a senior official modelling the behaviour he advocates. The deeper point he raised — that cultural investment is part of development — echoes arguments long made by linguists and education researchers: language is not ornamental. It carries knowledge systems, social cohesion, and cognitive tools that infrastructure alone cannot supply.
The State of Yoruba: Vital Yet Vulnerable
Yoruba is spoken by tens of millions as a first language across southwestern Nigeria and by significant communities elsewhere in the country and the diaspora. Ethnologue classifies it as institutional: it has literature, media presence, some formal education use, and official recognition in the areas where it is dominant. It is not on the brink of immediate extinction in the way dozens of smaller Nigerian languages are.
Yet vitality is not the same as security across all domains. Studies and expert commentary repeatedly flag domain loss. English dominates many radio programmes, formal schooling after the early years, professional settings, and digital content creation by younger users. Intergenerational transmission is weakening in urban households where parents, seeking advantage for their children, prioritise English at home. A professor of Yoruba language and dialectology at Adekunle Ajasin University has warned that negative attitudes among some Yoruba speakers themselves, combined with incomplete implementation of mother-tongue education policies, risk leaving the language’s future custodianship increasingly in the hands of non-native learners and foreigners.
Nigeria as a whole faces a sharper crisis. With more than 500 languages, it is one of the world’s most linguistically diverse countries. UNESCO and Nigerian linguists have documented dozens already extinct or severely endangered. Warnings about the major languages — Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa — tend to focus less on total disappearance than on reduced functional range, loss of specialised vocabulary (proverbs, oral history, traditional medicine, ritual), and the gradual replacement of deep fluency by a thinner, mixed variety.
Policy has been inconsistent. The 2022 National Language Policy favoured mother-tongue instruction in early primary years, aligning with evidence from UNESCO and the World Bank that children learn better when first taught in a language they fully understand. Subsequent shifts back toward English as the medium across levels have drawn criticism from language associations who argue the move accelerates domain loss.
Entertainment as Strategy — and Its Limits
Masoyinbo demonstrates one effective lever: make pure language use competitive, visible, and fun. Celebrity participation expands reach. The show’s social-media distribution carries it to the diaspora.
Viewers encounter proverbs, historical references, and precise vocabulary they might never hear in mixed urban speech. For younger audiences especially, the competitive format can reframe fluency as skill and status rather than rural nostalgia.
Yet shows alone cannot reverse structural pressures. Language maintenance requires consistent use in the home, early education that builds literacy and confidence in the mother tongue, media content that goes beyond entertainment into news, science, and everyday information, and economic incentives that reward bilingual competence rather than treating indigenous languages as optional heritage. Digital tools — apps, online classes such as those offered by Fabilola’s EAYoruba platform, YouTube channels, and AI language models trained on quality Yoruba data — can help, but only if speakers choose to use them regularly.
There is also a philosophical dimension. Yoruba is a tonal language rich in metaphor, proverb, and layered meaning. Oral literature, Ifá literary corpus, praise poetry (oríkì), and historical narratives are not fully transferable into English without loss. When transmission weakens, entire frameworks for understanding social relations, ethics, time, and the natural world become less accessible. Hamzat’s insistence that the language is identity and community is therefore not sentimental; it is descriptive of how many societies organise belonging and knowledge.
A Shared Responsibility in a Diverse Nation
Hamzat correctly noted that Nigeria’s diversity is a strength and that preserving indigenous languages is a collective task. In practice this means different things in different regions. For Yoruba it involves strengthening transmission in Lagos and the Southwest while supporting diaspora communities and non-Yoruba learners who choose the language.
Parallel efforts exist or are needed for Igbo, Hausa, and the hundreds of smaller languages whose speakers have even fewer institutional resources.
The political timing of Hamzat’s appearance — as an aspirant for higher office — will inevitably colour some reactions. Language advocacy can be instrumentalised. Yet the underlying challenge remains regardless of electoral cycles. Successful societies do not treat their major indigenous languages with indifference. They invest in them as living systems of thought and belonging while remaining open to the practical advantages of global languages.
Masoyinbo has shown that entertainment can put the issue on screens and in conversations. Hamzat’s participation and subsequent call have amplified that visibility. The harder work — consistent home use, coherent education policy, media production, documentation of specialised knowledge, and genuine prestige for deep fluency — still lies ahead.
Whether the interest generated by celebrity episodes and political endorsements translates into more children who can answer ten questions without a single English word, and into adults who choose to do so in daily life, will determine if Yoruba remains not only spoken but fully itself for the generations Hamzat says must inherit it.
Samuel O. Sulaimon is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Naijapiz. He covers News, Sports, Finance, Faiths, Education, Technology.
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