The structure of English departments in Nigerian universities is outlined, the English curricula of seven institutions are examined, and problems associated with English instruction in Nigeria are discussed. Nigeria is in a crisis in English teaching, with a shortage of professional language teachers, phonologists, and phoneticians, inadequate language laboratories and equipment, low student and teacher motivation, confused educational policy, indifference on the part of the government and universities, and public apathy. Controversy exists over the balance of language teaching and literature instruction and over grammar and structural approaches to teaching the language component. The most difficult problem concerns which variety of English to teach, British standard English or the Nigerian pidgin, which is currently in the first of three stages of standardization referred to by Rage (1986) as reification, totemization, and institutionalization. It is proposed that this language variety is a Nigerian cultural artifact and may hold the key to its national language policy, and that it should be accepted for pedagogical purposes. (MSE)