The study was designed to investigate the role and status of the Yoruba Language in the formal school system of Western Nigeria during the period 1846 to 1971. The underlying rationale is that mother tongue education teaching in the bilingual situation of African countries has all too often been neglected or not subjected to the vigorous investigation it deserves. This is because the mother tongues (unobjectively referred to as vernaculars) is sometimes neglected in the educational programme especially when another language (in this case, English the language of the colonial masters) competes with it.