Paper Title
Language Rights and The Challenge of National Integration: The Nigeria Experience

Abstract
Linguistic diversity is often regarded as posing great challenges to efforts at building a stable and properly integrated political community. It then becomes improbable for a country to adopt a benign approach to issues of its language resources, hence the legitimacy of one form of language policy and planning or the other. Not minding the veracity of the above claim, however, justifications for minority language rights tend to checkmate pragmatic efforts at language planning. This paper in the context of this quagmire explores this interplay of planning versus rights in the Nigerian context with the utmost intention of ascertaining the extent of social justice in this regard. In summation, the paper avers that language planning efforts in Nigeria cannot be held liable to any wide discrepancies with known international best practices. Keywords- Linguistic diversity, National integration, Language policy and planning, Language rights.