MULTILINGUALISM AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

Ijeoma Uchechukwu Nnagbo

Abstract


Over the years, Nigeria has been plagued by multiplicity of languages and this has remained a bane to our national development. There is no gain saying the fact that we need to develop and organize our numerous languages for the betterment and growth of our nation. To neglect this fact is to live in a fool’s paradise. Diverse languages that exist in Nigeria, gave rise to the need to choose among these languages, which one or ones to be used as the national language(s) in Nigeria. The multilingual nature of Nigeria has been examined in relation to the provisional result of 1991 census conducted in Nigeria and the status of language policy in the country, which eventually led to the discovery of the fact that Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba Languages, have the highest speakers in terms of population, and are already made co-official languages in Nigeria, alongside the English language. If eventually a language policy emerges in Nigeria, which of them should be considered as the national language. In the pursuit of this study, theories of multilingualism and language planning shall be discussed. Five research questions are formulated to guide the study. The collection of data for this study shall be based on secondary sources, which includes textbooks, books, newspapers, lecture notes, magazines and so on. The sources are both foreign and local ones, and then information collected shall be applied to the Nigerian situation. Finally the study identifies the effect of multilingualism in Nigerian development especially on the economy, politics, education and society at large.

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