Language Policy and Medium of Instruction in Nigeria: A Critical Political Economy Analysis

Nigeria's language-in-education policy, which specifies mother tongue instruction in the first three years of primary schooling before transition to English as medium of instruction, has persisted in its official form for over four decades while failing to be implemented at the level of policy intention across most of the country. Existing analyses of this policy failure have concentrated on implementation capacity and teacher training factors while giving insufficient attention to the political economy dimensions of language policy that shape the material interests governing policy maintenance and resistance. This dissertation develops a critical political economy analysis of Nigeria's language-in-education policy, integrating political economy theory with critical language policy studies to produce an original analytical framework applicable to post-colonial multilingual states. The analytical programme draws on documentary analysis of education policy archives spanning 1977 to 2024, in-depth interviews with forty-three language policy actors including federal and state ministry officials, curriculum developers, teachers union representatives, and textbook publishers, and ethnographic fieldwork in three states representing contrasting policy implementation environments. The analysis reveals that the persistence of English medium dominance despite official mother tongue policy serves the material interests of multiple powerful stakeholder groups: textbook publishers who profit from English-medium instructional material production, private school proprietors who market English medium instruction as quality signifier, and educated urban families who view mother tongue instruction as a public school disadvantage relative to private school English instruction. The dissertation argues that policy reform requires political economy analysis that identifies and addresses these interest alignments, not merely capacity and implementation strategy. Keywords: language policy, medium of instruction, political economy, Nigeria, mother tongue education.