Abstract
To be a greater nation, Nigeria as a country housing diverse inhabitants needs a common language to unify its populace, because language is central to our existence and it is hard to think of ourselves, societies, and culture without language. Language is a primary means of socialization. It interacts with the social, political and economic power structures. It is that distinctive human reality which serves as the means and end of behaviour ordered and achieved within any given community, society or nation at large. Language echoes how human beings interpret and interact with their world - what they say, how they say it, and the way they think in certain ways. It is the primary medium for the construction and transmission of knowledge and for the articulation of ideas. In short, language constitutes humans and their identities. For that, Nigeria as a country needs a lingua franca to carry everyone along. For the purpose of this paper, English language is seen as the most sophisticated communication tool of life, and what it means to turn the country’s diversity into a source of strength, and to keep building Nigeria, English language should be maintained as the lingua franca. In this paper, one of the recommendations made is that comprehension passages in English language be used as a channel of unifying the multilingual and multicultural target audience, for nation building and development is a task that must be done.
Keywords: language, transmission, lingua franca, diversity, unifying.
