The Federal Government has officially scrapped the 2022 National Language Policy, which had mandated the use of indigenous languages as the medium of instruction from early childhood through Primary Six.
Speaking on Wednesday in Abuja at the opening of the Language in Education International Conference 2025 organised by the British Council, the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, announced that English will once again serve as the primary language of instruction across all levels of education from primary to tertiary institutions.
Alausa said recent data and performance assessments revealed that students taught in their mother tongue performed poorly in national examinations, leading to widespread learning gaps.
“The National Policy on Language has been cancelled. English is now the language of instruction in all Nigerian schools. Language plays a critical role in education, and our review shows that the use of mother tongue has failed to deliver the expected results,” he said.
The minister explained that a detailed review of the policy, backed by evidence and real-world classroom observations across the country’s six geopolitical zones, found that the implementation of the mother-tongue model led to weak literacy and comprehension skills among students.
“We discovered that many children progressed through primary and even junior secondary school without mastering basic literacy or numeracy skills. They eventually sit for WAEC, NECO, and JAMB examinations conducted in English and fail woefully,” Alausa said.
He also pointed to Nigeria’s complex linguistic landscape as a major obstacle to effective policy implementation. “In a state like Borno, while Hausa is widely spoken, Kanuri is the predominant mother tongue. In Lagos, many classrooms have students and teachers from different regions. This diversity makes it difficult to sustain one language of instruction,” he explained.
The 2022 policy, which aimed to preserve cultural identity and promote indigenous languages among Nigeria’s more than 600 linguistic groups, faced major hurdles such as inadequate teaching materials, lack of trained instructors, and the absence of standardised orthographies for several local languages.
Alausa said the government’s new approach will prioritise improving the quality of teaching and learning in English while supporting the study of indigenous languages as subjects rather than mediums of instruction.
