The Sociolinguistic Consequences of Language Policy Failure in Early Childhood Language Education: Emerging Critical Lessons from Nigeria

Abstract In view of the nature of language as a critical global socio-cultural heritage, its communicative imperative and the role of official policy in its development, this study critically examines the provisions of early childhood education (ECE) language policy in Nigeria and the sociolinguistic consequences of its (mal) administration and failure. The study employed observation, content analysis and interview for data collection. It is anchored on Jerome Bruner’s language acquisition theory of interactionism and Cummins’ linguistic interdependence theory. Collected data were analysed qualitatively, and the results revealed strategic flaws in the ECE language policy and its administration. Some resultant consequences include the abandonment of the age-long effective sequential bilingual education, subliminal cultivation of linguistic prejudice in children and adults, unnecessary multilingual discourse in informal contexts, the emergence of monolingual children in a multilingual environment, and the sustenance of a poor variety of English. The study recommends compulsory adoption and implementation of simultaneous multilingual policy in ECE in English-as-second-language (ESL) and English-as-foreign language (EFL) countries in order to reap the enormous benefits of perfect bilingual or multilingual education.