The Federal Government has scrapped the national policy mandating the use of indigenous languages as the medium of instruction in Nigerian schools.
The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, announced the decision on Wednesday at the 2025 Language in Education International Conference organised by the British Council in Abuja.
According to Alausa, the cancellation was approved at the 69th meeting of the National Council on Education, held in Akure, Ondo State, from November 3 to 7.
The National Language Policy, approved in 2022, had required that children from Early Childhood Education to Primary Six be taught in their mother tongue or the language of their immediate community.
The policy was intended to promote indigenous languages, improve early learning outcomes, and affirm linguistic equality, while English remained the language of instruction in higher education.
However, Alausa said recent data revealed that the policy had contributed to poor learning outcomes in regions that heavily adopted mother-tongue instruction.
“We have seen a mass failure rate in WAEC, NECO, and JAMB in certain geopolitical zones, and those are the ones that adopted the mother tongue in an oversubscribed manner,” the minister said.
“This is about evidence-based governance. English now stands as the medium of instruction from pre-primary to tertiary education levels,” he added.
The minister noted that 15 years of implementing mother-tongue-based teaching had “literally destroyed education in certain regions,” stressing that policy decisions must be guided by data and not emotions.
He urged education stakeholders who disagreed with the new directive to present verifiable evidence supporting the benefits of indigenous-language instruction, adding that the ministry remained open to dialogue based on facts.
In her remarks, the Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmed, said the government was developing a new teacher training programme focused on literacy and numeracy at the foundational level.
“Now we are designing a training package for teachers that focuses on literacy and numeracy. This specifically targets teachers of pre-primary to Primary Three to improve their instructional methods,” she said.
Also speaking, the British Council Country Director, Ms. Donna McGowan, reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment to supporting Nigeria’s education reforms through teacher training, school leadership development, and language proficiency programmes.
