BBC launches Igbo, Yoruba language services in Nigeria

Lagos: The BBC this week launches its new Igbo and Yoruba services in Nigeria, as part of an expansion in local languages aimed at more in-depth reporting of countries around the world.

The digital-only services went live online and on social media yesterday, joining a platform for Pidgin speakers that was launched last year and has attracted widespread interest.

All three are among 12 language services set up across the world with the help of £291mil (RM1.6bil) British government funding.

Peter Okwoche, in charge of editorial for the launch, described Yoruba and Igbo as “the two final cogs in the wheel for the new services in West Africa” and said they were much needed.

“What we feel is that original journalism in a local language travels even further than in English,” he said in an interview.

“We’re big on the African narrative, the Nigerian narrative. It’s time for people to try to tell their own stories.”

Young Nigerians increasingly live life online, with social media hugely popular in the country, which has about 150 million mobile phone subscriptions among its population of nearly 190 million.

Nearly two-thirds (62%) of the population is aged under 24, giving it one of the youngest demographics in the world.

Okwoche said they were the corporation’s target audience, along with the business-savvy men and women for which the Igbo and Yoruba communities are noted both at home and abroad.

“All we ever get to hear from Nigeria these days is Boko Haram in the northeast. As serious as that story is, it’s happening in one particular part of the country,” he said.

“But there’s so much more happening. Here in Lagos, for instance, there’s technology stories, business and young entrepreneurs, the hustle of the street ... We never get to see that.”

The launch comes at a time of renewed tensions between Nigeria’s three main regions, particularly the Igbo-speaking southeast and the Hausa-speaking north.

In the southeast, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) group has revived separatist sentiment, half a century after a previous declaration of independence sparked a brutal civil war.

The populist rhetoric of IPOB’s leader, former London estate agent Nnamdi Kanu, has led to clashes between his supporters and the military, and propaganda on both sides.

Its push for a separate republic of Biafra, using its own media, including Kanu’s Radio Biafra, has also sparked similar calls from hardline Yoruba nationalists in the southwest.