Nigerian Pidgin is the product of contact between English and Nigerian languages. However, the first European visitors to the coast of Nigeria were not the English but the Portuguese. A kind of pidgin Portuguese probably developed between the Portuguese and their Nigerian hosts, later to be replaced by an English-based Nigerian Pidgin which is widely used nowadays. Today, several sub-varieties of Nigerian Pidgin can be recognised. Nigerian Pidgin has no official status even though the Government and its agents now use it as a means of reaching a wider audience.