Dorothy Medondo Unom
¬Department of French,
College of Education, Katsina-Ala, Benue State.
Email: [email protected]
Aondongu Nyon
Department of Tiv Language Studies
College of Education, Katsina-Ala
Email: [email protected]
Abraham Vearumun Kaa
Department of Tiv Language Studies
College of Education, Katsina-Ala
Email: [email protected]
Abstract
With a plethora of languages, Nigeria is a linguistic paradise of sorts. This linguistic variety could make Nigeria a modern Babel. No one knows exactly how many languages exist in Nigeria but estimates put the figure at somewhere between 400-450 languages. English is the official language in Nigeria and had enjoyed this unrivalled status alone until the Abacha administration made French a second official language in the mid 1990s. Both are exogenous languages taught as second languages. Three Languages of Wider Communication (LWC) or Dominant Languages (DL) Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba are designated “national languages”. The rest of the indigenous languages have the status of “minority languages” – Non-Dominant Languages (NDL). There are feelings in some quarters that an indigenous language should be used as an official language for the purpose of integration. In a multilingual setting such as ours, which of these myriad of languages should be selected is a topic for unending debate with no consensus, not before, not now. This paper fingers politics, or better still, politicisation, as being responsible for this lingering debate on the choice of an indigenous Nigerian language as an official language – a lingua franca. The paper favours a more inclusive language policy that recognizes the importance of the indigenous languages in special domains of the lives of the people.
KEYWORDS: LANGUAGE, POLITICS, NATIONAL LANGUAGE, OFFICIAL LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE PLANNING, CHOICE