One of the greatest threats to national development and the rights of individuals and groups in Nigeria and some parts of Africa is the growing increase in religious fundamentalism by major religions in the continent. The worsening economic fortunes of many African countries, poor and corrupt leadership, the increase in ethnic nationalism, oppression of the minority by dominant powers and ideologies, external influences from extremist groups (Islamic and Christian), among others, have been suggested as likely causes of religious fundamentalism in Africa. The postcolonial Nigerian nation has suffered calamitous losses from religious conflicts. Consequently, some of Nigeria’s 21st century writers have tried in their works to present a situation in which groups use language to construct individual and collective identities and ideologies, legitimise their actions and justify acts of violence against others. The grammatical resource of mood and transitivity employed by the writers in the text under consideration enables them to represent individual and group experiences as well as intergroup relations in social interactions. Therefore, working within the tenets of critical stylistics (CS) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study aims to expose the ideological motivations that underlie the expression of religious discourses in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, Chidubem Iweka’s The Ancient Curse and Uwem Akpan’s Luxurious Hearses and their implications for national stability and development. The data reveal that the sociopolitical climate in postcolonial Nigeria breeds a culture of hatred, intolerance, violence, exclusion and curtailment of individual and group rights in the name of religion and these acts are expressed in diverse discourse-grammatical patterns.

There are a variety of individual differences that English language teaching (ELT) professionals cannot afford to ignore. This essay is based on a premise that teaching and learning English in Nigeria’s multilingual background of 526 languages (Ethnologue, 2018) present an extraordinary context of multiculturalism and individual differences in the language classroom. ELT professionals in such a context require significant expertise in the application of inclusive practices. The essay identified gaps in the praxis and policy dimensions of Nigerian ELT practice relating to individual differences and suggested a research focus on these two areas. It concluded that teachers should adopt clear, empirically tested methodologies to cater for the different students in the class, create good relationships in the classroom to develop learner self-confidence, integrate activities and tasks that clearly appeal to different learning styles and personalities, personalize learning as much as possible, create learner autonomy, and pay attention to cultural variations among L2 learners.

This paper is an investigation into the role which an adequate knowledge of linguistics can play in the enhancement of teaching/learning of English in Nigeria. The study is necessitated by the undeniable role which English plays in the world, especially in Nigeria, were its instrumental and non-instrumental values have become so compelling in recent times. There is an assumption however, that the English as a second language (ESL) teacher in Nigeria often lacks the ability to utilize the necessary linguistic research findings to boost maximum productivity in the teaching/learning process, which he needs mandatorily for efficiency. In this exposition, the numerous frontiers that can be explored by the ESL teacher, such as the organizational, pedagogical, psychological and sociological dimensions have been highlighted. It is hoped that these skills, when acquired by the ESL teacher, will enhance the teaching/learning of the target language in Nigeria.

The social media is now the fastest and easiest means of communication; it is very popular and most of its sites are accessible. The Facebook, one of the popular types of the social media is not just common among youngsters; it is very dynamic, user-friendly and specific. This paper using the descriptive design and Technological Determision (TD) theory, investigates the language of the Facebook and discovers that the platform is awash with a lot of cyberslangs, acronyms, morphological shortenings, initialisms, contractions and neologisms. The paper discovers that the writing style of the Facebook departs from the known conventional ways of writing, a situation where a word can be represented in any form deemed fit by the user. Again, it is observed that the flexibility of the platform, its economic sensitivity or time saving nature and its user friendliness makes the platform attractive. But the negative implication of all these is that it is anti-pedagogy and portends great danger to language learning and usage.