By EphraimAgbo
On 12 November 2025, at the British Council’s Language in Education International Conference in Abuja, Education Minister Tunji Alausa announced a sharp reversal in federal language policy: the 2022 National Language Policy that promoted mother-tongue instruction in the early grades has been cancelled, and English will once again be the primary medium of instruction from pre-primary through tertiary education. The minister framed the move as an evidence-based corrective to what he described as poorer outcomes in national exams in regions that had implemented mother-tongue instruction.
The announcement is at once technocratic and deeply political. It reads like a classic policy manoeuvre: appeal to data, promise uniformity, and foreground competitiveness. But in a country of more than 500 languages and persistent regional inequalities, language policy is never merely about pedagogy. It touches identity, memory and power — and raises urgent questions about whose knowledge counts in the Nigerian schoolroom.
What the government says — and what it shows
Alausa’s public justification is strikingly simple: national assessment data, he said, show higher failure rates in WAEC, NECO and JAMB in areas that adopted mother-tongue instruction, and English proficiency must be defended to protect students’ prospects. He argued the policy was founded on “evidence, not emotions.” Official posts from the ministry underscored that indigenous languages would still be taught as subjects, but would no longer serve as the default medium of instruction.
Technocrats will find this argument compelling if the underlying data are robust. A central practical challenge of mother-tongue programmes is implementation: teacher training, standardized curricula, textbooks and assessments must be aligned with the language strategy — an expensive and technically demanding undertaking. Federal sources and some state actors have privately acknowledged these very constraints: shortages of trained teachers, lack of materials, and difficulties scaling localised curricula have undermined roll-out. Several local outlets corroborated the ministry’s emphasis on implementation shortfalls.
What the international evidence actually says
Global research from UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank offers a more nuanced picture. A substantial body of work finds that well-resourced mother-tongue or bilingual programmes in early grades tend to improve foundational literacy and learning — especially for children who do not speak the official language at home. The gains are conditional: they depend on quality teacher education, appropriate learning materials, continuous assessment, and clear transition plans to second-language instruction. Where those inputs are missing, benefits quickly evaporate.
Put differently: the evidence does not say “mother tongue automatically fails”; it says “mother-tongue instruction succeeds when governments commit money, training and institutional capacity.” The policy trade-off is therefore not strictly language vs. results — it is between investing in systems to make multilingual teaching effective, or defaulting to a single lingua franca because it is administratively cheaper or politically expedient.
Cultural stakes: more than classroom comprehension
The shift from using indigenous languages as the medium of instruction to treating them merely as school subjects risks shrinking the domains in which those languages are used. Language is not an abstract artefact; it is a carrier of history, local knowledge, oral literature and social norms. Reducing a language’s role in the school — the primary public space where skills and status are transmitted — accelerates what linguists call domain loss and can hasten intergenerational language attrition.
Critics, from op-eds to language associations, have warned the policy could amount to cultural erasure or even “cultural genocide” — rhetorical flourishes that reflect deep anxieties about post-colonial identity and the unequal value attached to European languages. Editorials in national newspapers and statements from scholars underscored that fear.
The political economy: regions, identity and the centre
Language policy in Nigeria is never neutral. It intersects with regional politics, ethno-linguistic identities, and long debates over federalism. The 2022 policy already provoked contestation: states varied in appetite and capacity for localised instruction; elite urban parents often favoured continuity in English; rural communities were more likely to welcome mother-tongue approaches. A federal U-turn risks being read as top-down cultural centralisation, particularly if state governments and communities feel they were not meaningfully consulted.
Expect immediate political contestation: vocal cultural organisations, universities and some state governments will likely mobilise against the reversal; other actors — private schools, some federal technocrats and international investors — may welcome the stability and uniformity of English instruction. The policy may also reshape party-political narratives about national identity ahead of elections, and could be seized upon by actors seeking to portray the centre as insensitive to local ways of life.
Practical implications — short and medium term
In the short term (1–2 years) the move could produce measurable improvements in English exam scores where teachers are sufficiently proficient in English. But where children arrive in school with little English exposure, comprehension and retention may decline — unless the government pairs the policy with accelerated early-grade support, remedial programmes, and parent-engagement campaigns.
Medium term (3–5 years) outcomes hinge on implementation fidelity. If the federal government follows the announcement with large-scale investments in teacher training, transition pedagogy, assessment reform and targeted resources for marginalised communities, the risks can be mitigated. Absent that, the policy risks worsening educational inequality and undermining cultural preservation without delivering the promised gains.
What a responsible alternative would look like
The binary framing — English or mother-tongue — is a false one. International best practice suggests blended, contextually sensitive models: start early literacy in a child’s first language, progressively introduce English as a taught language, and ensure pedagogical materials and teacher skills are present for both. Where political actors doubt the feasibility of nationwide multilingual rollout, a staged approach (pilot, rigorous evaluation, scale conditional on outcomes) would be more defensible than an abrupt national cancellation.
Crucially, any pivot must transparently publish the data that motivated it, allow independent scrutiny, and open meaningful consultations with state education boards, teacher unions and linguists. Policy that claims to be “evidence-based” must accept external review of that evidence.
Conclusion
Nigeria’s announcement is a reminder that language policy sits at the junction of pedagogy, identity and politics. The federal government’s appeal to examinations and uniform standards is a plausible managerial logic. But in a multilingual polity with stark regional inequalities, the stakes go beyond test scores. Unless the U-turn is followed by transparent data, large-scale investment and genuine consultation, it risks trading a culturally rich — if imperfectly implemented — multilingual experiment for a short-term administrative fix that leaves local languages and marginalised learners worse off.
For a country whose greatest asset is its pluralism, language policy should be a vehicle for inclusion, not a steriliser of difference. The question now is whether Abuja will back its English-first decision with the resources and humility necessary to keep both learning and cultural survival on course.
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