Nigeria is a nation of tremendous socio-cultural diversities – in historical background, ethnicity, religion, belief, and especially language, which more often than not is the strongest factor giving identity, harmony, and continuity to ethnic groups, shaping the perceptions of their members. John Paden sees language as ‘a major mechanism of social communication between sub-systems …and… of expressing values, culture and ethnicity within a sub-system’.1 It is easy to see, in this light, how the most difficult problems of the entire political fabric of Nigeria are related to its great diversity of language.

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