2025 Came. Igbo Did Not Die. The Work Did Not End.

For years a sentence travelled through WhatsApp and pulpits: UNESCO had said Igbo would be extinct by 2025. In January 2025 The Guardian profiled Precious, a Wikitongues organiser, who put the rumour in its place: “2025 is already here, and definitely Igbo is not going extinct.”

What UNESCO did and did not say

Researchers have long noted a 2006 UN warning that Igbo was endangered, with some academic papers citing a 50-year horizon — closer to 2050 than to 2025. A 2026 review of the viral claim found no official UNESCO death certificate for 2025. The scare was sloppy. The anxiety underneath it was not.

Homes still raise children who understand Igbo and will not speak it. English remains the language of arrival. That is the real emergency: not a date, but a sitting room.

What is actually working

Saturday schools in Lagos, London, and Houston now run with the seriousness once reserved for catechism. Writers print children’s books with tone marks. Musicians slip whole verses into tracks that chart. BBC Igbo and a thickening internet of lessons mean a child in Port Harcourt can hear the language at full volume even if the street has switched.

A language does not die in a dictionary. It dies in a house where nobody bothers to answer.

Nnukwu nne, keep talking. 2025 is gone. The children are still listening — more than they admit.