The Federal Government has officially revoked the 2022 National Language Policy, which previously required indigenous languages to be used as the medium of instruction from early childhood through Primary Six.
Minister of Education Dr. Tunji Alausa made the announcement on Wednesday in Abuja during the opening of the Language in Education International Conference 2025, organized by the British Council. He stated that English will once again serve as the primary language of instruction across all educational levels, from primary to tertiary institutions.
Alausa explained that recent performance data indicated students taught in their mother tongue consistently underperformed in national examinations, creating significant learning gaps.
“The National Policy on Language has been cancelled. English is now the language of instruction in all Nigerian schools. Our review shows that using mother tongue has not delivered the desired educational outcomes,” he said.
The minister highlighted that a comprehensive review of the policy, supported by classroom observations and evidence from across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, revealed that the mother-tongue model contributed to weak literacy and numeracy skills.
“We observed children progressing through primary and junior secondary levels without mastering basic literacy or numeracy, resulting in poor performance in WAEC, NECO, and JAMB examinations conducted in English,” Alausa noted.
He also cited Nigeria’s complex linguistic diversity as a significant challenge. “In Borno, Kanuri predominates despite the widespread use of Hausa, and in Lagos, classrooms often have students and teachers from multiple regions. This makes a uniform language of instruction difficult to sustain,” he explained.
The 2022 policy had aimed to preserve cultural identity and promote indigenous languages among Nigeria’s more than 600 linguistic groups, but it faced obstacles including inadequate teaching materials, a shortage of trained instructors, and the lack of standardized orthographies for many local languages.
Under the revised approach, the government will focus on enhancing the quality of English instruction while treating indigenous languages as subjects rather than mediums of instruction.
