_ Most Nigerian languages (including Igbo) were not originally written languages. They were principally oral and their literature - poetry, and stories - were oral. There were certain coded writing systems, but those were neither widely used nor widely taught. Igbo, for instance has a lot of internal variation (dialects) by region. It is only within the last 100 years or so that Igbo linguists agreed upon and adopted writing conventions and orthographies for the language. Nigeria is a vast multilingual country with diverse ethnic groups. English was the singular language used to merge so many different peoples and nations into one country forged by Britain.