_ In this day and age, English has acquired near-native status in Nigeria. Most everyone speaks it from birth and is taught it at school. It is the language of education and all official activities in a multilingual country of around 200 million people. We have developed our own way of speaking it and own local colloquialisms that even the English would not understand. Some people speak better English than they do their mother tongue. Some speak only English. Most people learn to read and write English before they learn to read and write their own mother tongue, although of course we speak our various mother tongues from birth. Many are bilingual or trilingual. Therefore, writing in English feels automatic, native in a way. It's an interesting thing.