₦airaland Forum

A Professor of Linguistics at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Christine Iyetunde Ofulue, has stated that Nigerian Pidgin is experiencing rapid global growth due to its exceptional scale and reach.

She stated this in Abuja while delivering the university’s 35th inaugural lecture, titled “Reclaiming Marginalised Voices: Intersections of Diversity and Educational Spaces.”

The Guardian reports that some Nigerian Pidgin words already in the Oxford English Dictionary include: eba, japa, abi, Yahoo boy, suya, area boy, Jand, danfo, okada, among others.

While Ofulue, a staff member in the Faculty of Arts of the NOUN, asserted that all languages are equal, she also said Nigeria stands as Africa’s most linguistically diverse nation, with around 540 distinct languages across three major language families — Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Niger-Congo spoken by over 223 million people.

“This diversity means that multilingualism is not just common, but a way of life,” she said, adding, “Nigerians regularly navigate fluidly among local, regional, and national languages.”

Ofulue argued that while English sits at the top of the hierarchy as the language of formal education and administration, many minority languages face endangerment, policy neglect, and declining intergenerational transmission, marking a stark divide between grassroots linguistic reality and official recognition.
The professor explained that at the heart of this linguistic landscape is Nigerian Pidgin (Naija), a vibrant result of centuries-old contact, trade, and multicultural adaptation.

According to her, among the world’s 76 pidgins and creoles, Nigerian Pidgin is exceptional for its scale and reach.

“It is spoken by 100 – 120 million people, making it the 14th most spoken language globally,” she said.

She emphasised that it has evolved from a colonial-era trade code into a pan-Nigerian lingua franca, serving as a medium for daily communication, creative expression, and social bonding, while symbolising both urban identity and national belonging.

Ofolue added: “The journey of Nigerian Pidgin is not just a story of marginalisation, but also of resilience and reclamation.”

She explained that it is a testament to everyday Nigeria’s capacity to forge unity and voice across boundaries, even as it remains excluded from many formal domains.

On “reclaiming marginalised voices,” she said this can be achieved through robust, strategic and locally grounded research agendas.

These include building learning analytics systems that generate actionable data, digitising indigenous knowledge systems, and undertaking comparative studies within African contexts.

The lecturer pointed out that marginalisation of small languages implies that, without deliberate intervention, they will continue to be excluded from education, digital spaces, and economic opportunity.

For educational spaces, curriculum reform, inclusive pedagogy, and technology learning can reposition indigenous language as resources, not relics.

She, therefore, recommended interventions that can promote language development in marginalised languages, some of which include standardisation of terminology, developing glossaries for digital, technical, and educational fields through expert user partnerships, as well as promotion of multimedia content, which includes support for accessible and engaging audio-visual content in indigenous languages to meet learners in digital spaces.

In his speech, the chairman of the inaugural lecture series, the Vice-Chancellor of NOUN, Professor Olufemi Peters, thanked Ofolue for “reminding us how important our pidgin is.”
He spoke in pidgin while saluting the linguistics professor for a good lecture, drawing animated cheers from the large audience.

Source: https://guardian.ng/news/nigerian-pidgin-now-a-global-lingua-franca-says-noun-don/

Good one!

Naija to the world. Sadly Naija sef still dey backwards but maybe there is hope....
Maybe light will shine on our path .....

Great100000:
Source: https://guardian.ng/news/nigerian-pidgin-now-a-global-lingua-franca-says-noun-don/

Nice one globally up we go till we spread it outaa

Great100000:
Source: https://guardian.ng/news/nigerian-pidgin-now-a-global-lingua-franca-says-noun-don/

How has this changed our global ranking in extreme poverty and out of school children, exporting our resources and ourselves to neocolonial, racist and cold countries?

TheBedWench:
The one-drop rule is a social and legal principle of racial classification that was historically prominent in the United States in the 20th century. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry ("one drop" of black blood)[1][2] is considered black (Negro or colored in historical terms).

This concept became codified into the law of some states in the early 20th century. It was associated with the principle of "invisible blackness" that developed after the long history of racial interaction in the South, which had included the hardening of slavery as a racial caste and later segregation. It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.[3]

The one-drop rule is defunct in law in the United States and was never codified into federal law.

Every nation has her own pidgin though.

Its just a short-cut to conversing with someone without big grammars or wasting time.

Huh
Global Lingua Franca
To what drug do we owe the pleasure of this delusion

Nigerian pidgin English is a very creative language.

I met a Liberian who understood it a little. I started blowing pidgin with him not knowing he was not a Nigerian. That was when dude told me he wasn't a Nigerian.

Na you sabi… most of these words are not pidgin… don’t mix people indigenous languages with another

Pidgin is nice but not formal, it cannot be used in a formal setting

updatechange:
Na you sabi… most of these words are not pidgin… don’t mix people indigenous languages with another

Languages borrow generally as a result of contact.

Military, lieutenant, army, colonel, villa, etc are not English words.

I still remember when our teacher used to shout at us to speak good English that year... Only for me to meet her last year at ShopRite Apo speaking pigin to the security guy ..na me cum shout 4 her to speak good English Aunty...the rest na story for my men..

Lesson is be your self the world will recognize you one day..

Nigerian artists (Davido, Asake, Omah Lay, Ruger, etc) have a huge role to play in this. I always appreciate how they throw in Nigerian pidgin, slangs and words into their music. Non-Nigerians can listen to Nigerian music and have a good understanding of what they're saying. You can't say the same for other Africans artists. Nigerian pidgin and music has dominated the scene and continues to do so.

anonimi:
How has this changed our global ranking in extreme poverty and out of school children, exporting our resources and ourselves to neocolonial, racist and cold countries?

you programme you like this? Na so you wan live your life miserable and for how long?

How many books are written in pidgin globally, there's nothing to be proud of here

As it should.

I mean, if Jamaican patois can be recognized worldwide, why not Nigerian pidgin English?

this one don start, na only Guiness records for silly things like cooking food, pidgin language, dem know

Imagine such waywardness

Imagine such waywardness

anonimi:
How has this changed our global ranking in extreme poverty and out of school children, exporting our resources and ourselves to neocolonial, racist and cold countries?

Gbsmsulotey hahahahahahaha Muchechecheche, this is an intercontinental ballistic missile from your armory fired from the Pentagon headquarters and it has hit its intended targets, nawaooo, you get plenty AK-47 ooooooooo

Omenlon:
you programme you like this?

Na so you wan live your life miserable and for how long?

How are most of us not living a miserable life, especially since ebilokan and APC ended PDP prosperity with their propaganda lies and fake promises

anonimi:
Petrol should never cost more than N70 per litre, says APC

January 19, 2015

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has described as mere tokenism the reduction of petrol price from N97 to N87 per litre, saying the petroleum product ordinarily should sell for N70.

On Sunday, the federal government announced the reduction of petrol price, citing the fall of global crude oil price.

But the APC through Lai Mohammed, its spokesman, on Monday accused the government of making a show out of deceit, saying “a 10.3 per cent slash in the price of petrol was a mere tokenism at a time the price of crude oil has crashed by about 60 per cent”.

It argued that the pump price of a litre of petrol should not be more than 70 Naira, alleging that at N87 per litre, the government was forcing Nigerians to subsidise the massive corruption in the oil sector by N17 for every litre of fuel.

https://www.thecable.ng/petrol-never-cost-n70-per-litre-says-apc/

anonimi:
How are most of us not living a miserable life, especially since ebilokan and APC ended PDP prosperity with their propaganda lies and fake promises

Hahahaha, another 5 stones of David sling from your armory fired from Jerusalem and it hits the Forehead of the Goliath of Apc and the Apc Goliath fell down, Hahaha 😂

anonimi:
How has this changed our global ranking in extreme poverty and out of school children, exporting our resources and ourselves to neocolonial, racist and cold countries?

na everything be poverty, dont you have better things to say

For some reason the most popular amongst all pidgin words is "nyash"

Which tribe first speak pigeon English for this Nigeria?
E be like say na bendel

anonimi:
How has this changed our global ranking in extreme poverty and out of school children, exporting our resources and ourselves to neocolonial, racist and cold countries?

Sit down there, same country and younger people than your age, people are becoming MD of their companies, receiving dollars on social media channels

She must be mistaken. “Ẹba", "Japa" and "Abi" are Yoruba words.

Samtob90:
Sit down there, same country and younger people than your age, people are becoming MD of their companies, receiving dollars on social media channels

I am obviously not a self centred person like you.

Have you heard of Enlightened Self Interest (ESI)? Read about it to redeem yourself from your unprofitable, suboptimal self centredness.

anonimi:
Neo-black Problem: Must Blacks Be Ruled by Whites in Order to Prosper?

In short, the neo-black dilemma may be framed as follows: is it better to live under white rule without political dignity but with basic life-sustaining standards for many;

or to live under black rule with illusory political dignity and without basic life- sustaining standards for the majority?
@
@
The path forward for Africa lies in cultivating higher and adequate levels of personal and communal agential integrity as well as full personal responsibility and productivity. Not to mention creativity (including epistemic creativity), productive justice (such as merit and freedom), harmony and reconciliation at local and international levels, and a proper domestication of capitalism and other related values and institutions.

Africa must stop wasting her time on dreams of socialism because it is a system of wealth distribution primarily. Whereas, capitalism is a system of wealth creation primarily, and wealth has to be produced before it can be distributed.

https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2024/10/12/neo-black-problem-must-blacks-be-ruled-by-whites-in-order-to-prosper/

Tikky4me:
Pidgin is nice but not formal, it cannot be used in a formal setting

Exactly. I support you dear. Pidgin can never be used in a formal setting.

Call it Nigerian English not Nigerian Pidgin. E get why

2 more characters needed

All these people with useless titles talking as if they are on steroid, Pidgin English is a bastardised form of English which can never be accepted as an official lingua fraca, has no native speakers and is used just for doing business with others with whom one shares the pidgin language with.
It only survives today in territories which formerly belonged to the European colonial nations, and act as lingua franca. It is a means for intergroup communication, but not as vernacular, which are usually defined as language varieties used for ordinary interactions that occur outside a business context.
Nigeria on it own has no native language, only a true/legal country or a nation can have a native language. Our official English language is a borrowed language forced on us by the colonisers, Language is a prerequisite of identifying a sovereign nation, not a country or a nation ruled by the likes of IMF and WORLD BANK but governed by puppets.