This is probably a good thing for the education system and a bad thing for lots of minority languages.
Teachers will have a nearly infinitely larger pool of material, without the need to translate it, and Nigeria will be able to hire foreign teachers if necessary. Nigeria is one of the world’s fastest growing countries and will be an even more significant immigration target in the future, so schools that are accessible to foreign teachers and students will be a blessing.
There’s nothing wrong with being bilingual and learning both languages in school.
if I’m reading it right, it looks like it was a “requirement” to teach the mother tongue, and now its up to the school on if they want to implement mother-tongue languages; but they just now also have to use an English instruction method.
educational policy changes are nothing new; especially for newer school systems that are still figuring things out.
The Federal Government has formally scrapped the mother-tongue-based teaching policy introduced in 2022, reinstating English as the sole medium of instruction across all levels of education in Nigeria.
So Wikipedia says they have over 520 languages in Nigeria, Removing the requirement for a mother tongue allows those minority languages to be used by their native speakers in school, supplemented by a nation wide English framework.
