PIDGIN AS NIGERIA'S NATIONAL LANGUAGE: A RE-ASSESSMENT

ABSTRACT

This paper re-assesses the place of Nigerian Pidgin in the society with respect to the demand for its nationalisation. Nigerian Pidgin has emerged as a basic language of wider communication in Nigeria due to its mutual intelligibility and the population that makes use of it. As a result, speakers as well as scholars in the sociolinguistic field see the possibility of the official consideration of Nigerian Pidgin either as a national official language in Nigeria or as a Nigerian Indigenous Language. However, based on certain factors, the language may be unsuitable for a national official language, even though it serves as a lingua franca and, this serves as the hypothesis of this research. There are functions a language must fulfill for such a language to be successfully selected as a national language or a language of important status. This paper tests Nigerian Pidgin using such functions in the academic setting as well as the general public such as motor parks, offices, church, etc, using questionnaires. Secondary data were also employed. And the results show that, Nigerian Pidgin, at present, cannot serve as a national language in Nigeria based on certain functions it must be developed to fulfill. The paper concludes by highlighting recommendations helpful for the decision making process of the status of Nigerian Pidgin in the society.