The origins and development of Pidgin in Nigeria are exhaustively examined. The study's perspectives are historical, theoretical, ontological and sociological. Nigerian Pidgin is identified as a language in its own right, with all the characteristics and potentialities of a natural language, its comparatively recent origins nothwithstanding. The authors treat the structure of the language as such; and make the distinctions between Nigerian Pidgine and a range of pidgin-like forms in Nigeria.

Professor Ben Elugbe and Dr. Augusts Omamor are both linguistics of repute, and teach in the Department of Linguistics and African Languages at the University of Ibadan.