Multilingual Education and Implementation of National Language Policy in Nigeria

Abstract: Due to the linguistic plurality of Nigeria, the National Policy on Education assigned different functions to the many languages in the nation's education. The outcome, particularly with the current National Language Policy (NLP), is that more than one language is used both in the classroom and the course of a child's education especially in the pre-basic classes and from Basic 1 to 6 in primary schools. This paper examined the current practice of multilingual education (MLE) in primary schools in Aba North LGA, Abia State, the challenges encountered by teachers in the implementation of the NLP and strategies for effective implementation. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. A sample of 100 teachers was randomly drawn from primary schools. The instrument for data collection was “Multilingual Education Questionnaires” (MLEQ) adopted from Olagbaju (2020). The research instrument was revalidated and reliability was estimated using the Cronbach Alpha technique, and a coefficient of 0.68 was obtained. Four research questions were posed and were answered using simple percentage descriptive statistics. Findings indicated that teachers are aware of the NLP provisions but reported that MLE is impracticable moreover, there are no resources and materials for teaching and implementing MLE. Students and parents prefer the use of the English language in teaching to the use of indigenous languages.