Rethinking French as a Foreign Language in Nigeria: Towards an ECOWAS Communication Language Pedagogy

The conceptualisation of French as a foreign language in Nigerian educational policy fails to capture its actual communicative functions as a regional language of ECOWAS governance, trade, and mobility, resulting in pedagogical frameworks misaligned with the practical communicative demands of French use in the West African context. This study critically rethinks the status and pedagogical framing of French in Nigeria, developing a theoretically grounded and empirically validated ECOWAS Communication Language Pedagogy as an alternative framework. Theoretical development draws on English as a Lingua Franca pedagogy, world Englishes theory, and postcolonial language planning frameworks, adapted and extended for the West African multilingual reality. The empirical component employs a design-based research methodology, with iterative cycles of needs analysis, curriculum design, implementation, and evaluation across three institutional pilot sites: a university French department in Abuja, a vocational college in Kano, and a border community adult education programme in Kebbi State. Mixed methods evaluation data were collected over two academic years, combining proficiency assessments, communicative task performance measures, and participant and teacher interviews. Results confirm that the ECOWAS Communication Language Pedagogy produced significantly better performance on ECOWAS-relevant communicative tasks than conventional French-as-a-foreign-language instruction, with no significant difference in core grammatical accuracy outcomes. Learner motivation and course completion rates were significantly higher under the ECOWAS Communication Language Pedagogy condition. The study provides a complete pedagogical framework with curriculum materials, assessment instruments, and teacher training components ready for institutional adoption. Keywords: ECOWAS communication language, French pedagogy, lingua franca, language planning, West Africa