By Elizabeth Uwandu

Nigeria is among top beneficiaries of the largest British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC world service expansion as three of her official  languages; Igbo, Yoruba, and Pidgin  are among 11 others to increase the  BBC services from 29 to 40 languages in 2017.

The other languages are  Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Gujarati, Korean, Marathi, Punjabi, Telugu, and Tigrinya.

Speaking recently to Vanguard, Editor, BBC Africa, Bilkisu Labaran, who was at the University of Lagos, UNILAG , Mass Communication department to unveil the first set of Nigerians, who would develop the content for the expansion project, said the latest move was  part of the BBC’s plan to reach 500 million people by 2022, with a focus on young people and women.

Her words: “In over 70 years, this is the biggest expansion of the BBC as 11 new languages are going to be added to the existing ones. And it so happened that Nigeria is one of the beneficiaries.

”In Nigeria, we already have transmission in Hausa language, and you can listen to the world service in English. Now, we are also going to have a Yoruba service, an Igbo service and a pidgin service. This is going to really revolutionize what we do in Nigeria by making the BBC available in every corner of the country.”

On the uniqueness of the initiative, Labaran said that it was the first time BBC was going digital, and that the contents will be created by Nigerians.

“We have a really exciting editorial offer. We are going to transform things because for the first time, our media services will be fully digital.

”These three languages, Yoruba, Igbo and Pidgin will be on the social media. Each one of them will have BBC website; facebook and instagram accounts, including twitter handles. And then, the content that we create are going to be created by Nigerians,“ she said.