Developing a Theoretical Framework for French Language Education in Postcolonial Nigeria: Language Policy, Identity, and Power

French language education in postcolonial Nigeria operates within intersecting fields of colonial inheritance, regional geopolitics, and contested national identity, yet no comprehensive theoretical framework has been developed to account for the specific configurations of language policy, power, and identity that shape French education in the Nigerian postcolonial context. This study develops an original theoretical framework for French language education in postcolonial Nigeria, synthesising critical language policy theory, postcolonial theory, and Bourdieu's field theory into a coherent explanatory model. The theoretical development is grounded in a multi-site ethnographic study conducted across twelve months at four educational sites spanning the South-South, North West, North Central, and South East zones, including a federal secondary school, a state university French department, a border community school, and an Alliance Francaise centre. Ethnographic methods including participant observation, document analysis, and narrative interviewing generated a rich empirical base for theoretical grounding. The resulting framework, designated the Postcolonial French Education Field Model, identifies three constitutive tensions structuring French education in Nigeria: the tension between regional instrumentality and colonial prestige, the tension between standardisation and local variety legitimacy, and the tension between state language policy and grassroots language practice. The framework generates six original propositions that are empirically testable and methodologically accessible for future Nigerian French education research. The study constitutes a foundational theoretical contribution to a field previously characterised by theoretical borrowing from European frameworks inadequate to the Nigerian sociolinguistic reality. Keywords: French language education, postcolonial theory, language policy, field theory, Nigeria