There are over 520 native languages spoken in Nigeria. The two official languages are English (which was the language of Colonial Nigeria) and French (since 1996). The English-based creole Nigerian Pidgin – first used by the British and African slavers to facilitate the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th century – is the most common lingua franca, spoken by over 60 million people. The most commonly spoken native languages are Hausa (over 63 million when including second-language, or L2, speak…