Multilingual Education in Nigeria: Policy, Practice, Challenges and Solutions

Due to the linguistic plurality of Nigeria, the National Policy on Education (NPE, 2004) assigned different functions to the many languages in the nation’s education. The outcome of this is that more than one language is used both in the classroom and the course of a child’s education especially in the pre and lower primary schools. This paper examined the current practice of multilingual education in Nigeria pre and lower primary schools and the challenges encountered by teachers in the implementation of the NPE. Questionnaires were administered to answer research questions on the following variables – students’ attitude, parental factors and lack of materials. The research instrument was validated with reliability co-efficient of 0.68. Data were analysed using simple percentage descriptive statistics and results revealed that the implementation of the multilingualism provisions of the NPE is particularly poor in the private schools. Solutions were then suggested to the various problems discovered. Keywords: Multilingual Education, Multilingualism, Mother Tongue, Language of the Immediate Environment