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The Nigerian Government has officially abandoned the National Language Policy, which mandated that schools throughout Nigeria use indigenous languages as the medium of instruction from early childhood through primary education.
The announcement was made by the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, at the 2025 Language in Education International Conference organised by the British Council in Abuja on Wednesday.
“This is about evidence-based governance. English now stands as the medium of instruction from the pre-primary, primary, junior secondary, senior secondary and to the tertiary education level,” he said.
In 2022, the government ratified the National Language Policy (NLP) to encourage the use of local and mother tongues in early education. The policy stipulated that instruction from Early Child Care Education through Primary Six would be conducted in the language prevalent in the community.
The objective was to support cultural preservation, enhance learning outcomes, and provide indigenous languages with equivalent recognition while English remained the official language for later education and formal communication.
The Minister clarified that this conclusion was drawn after evaluating educational data across different states. He noted that students who were primarily taught in indigenous languages exhibited higher failure rates in national examinations and had difficulty with basic English comprehension.
“We have seen a mass failure rate in WAEC, NECO and JAMB in certain geo-political zones of the country, and those are the ones that adopted this mother tongue in an over-subscribed manner,” Alausa said.
He also added that comprehensive data analysis indicated that the mother-tongue policy had adversely affected learning outcomes across multiple regions.
