Abuja: Professor of Linguistics at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Christine Ofulue, has highlighted the growing global significance of Nigerian Pidgin, emphasizing its role as an emerging global lingua franca due to its remarkable scale and reach. Ofulue shared these insights in Abuja during the university’s 35th inaugural lecture titled ‘Reclaiming Marginalised Voices: Intersections of Diversity and Educational Spaces.’
According to News Agency of Nigeria, Ofulue pointed out that Nigeria is Africa’s most linguistically diverse nation, with approximately 540 distinct languages spanning three major language families: Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Niger-Congo, spoken by over 223 million people. This diversity underlines that multilingualism is not merely common but an integral part of life in Nigeria, where individuals routinely switch between local, regional, and national languages.
Ofulue argued that although English has traditionally been viewed as the language of formal education and administration, many minority languages face challenges such as endangerment, policy neglect, and declining intergenerational transmission. This creates a significant divide between grassroots linguistic reality and official recognition. She elaborated that Nigerian Pidgin plays a central role in the country’s linguistic landscape as a vibrant outcome of long-standing contact, trade, and multicultural adaptation.
Nigerian Pidgin, with its exceptional reach, is among the world’s 76 pidgins and creoles, Ofulue noted. It is spoken by 100 to 120 million people, ranking it as the 14th most spoken language globally. Having evolved from a colonial-era trade code, pidgin now serves as a pan-Nigerian lingua franca, facilitating daily communication, creative expression, and social bonding, while symbolizing both urban identity and national belonging.
Ofulue emphasized that the journey of Nigerian Pidgin is not only about marginalization but also resilience and reclamation. It exemplifies everyday Nigeria’s ability to foster unity and voice across boundaries, despite its exclusion from many formal domains. She underscored that reclaiming marginalized voices requires robust, strategic, and locally grounded research agendas, such as building learning analytics systems, digitizing indigenous knowledge systems, and conducting comparative studies within African contexts.
Without deliberate intervention, Ofulue warned, smaller languages risk continued exclusion from education, digital spaces, and economic opportunities. She advocated for repositioning indigenous languages through educational spaces, curriculum reform, inclusive pedagogy, and technology learning. Interventions to promote language development in marginalized languages include standardizing terminology, developing glossaries for digital, technical, and educational fields through expert user partnerships, and promoting multimedia content, including support for audio-visual content in indigenous languages to engage learners in digital spaces.
The Vice-Chancellor of NOUN, Prof. Olufemi Peters, praised Ofulue for underscoring the importance of pidgin to Nigeria. Peters, who chaired the inaugural lecture, expressed his appreciation in pidgin, earning applause from the audience. The Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Administration, Prof. Isaac Butswat, also commended Ofulue in his vote of thanks for enlightening the audience on the evolution of Nigerian Pidgin.