Abstract: | As Joshua Fishman notes, in a country where political boundaries are more ideologized than the nationalities that compose it, and where efforts are being made to strengthen and maintain the boundaries regardless of the socio-cultural character of the whole population, pressure for cultural unification of all the peoples may develop. In Nigeria such pressure has become recently intensified, as can be seen from the call upon the federal military government to declare one of the Nigerian languages as the nation's lingua franca. The purpose of this paper therefore is to examine the implications that such a language policy would have for the unity of the nation. The main argument is that declaring an indigenous language as Nigeria's lingua franca at the present stage of the country's economic, political and cultural development will impede the progress toward national unity and political integration. Notes. |