Paper long abstract

Following the granting of internal self-government to the three existing administrative regions in pre-independence Nigeria in the 1950s, (during a period of transition to the country’s full political independence in 1960), Nigerians in the respective regions had hoped for a dramatic transformation in the socio-economic scene. Action Group, the political party that took over from the British colonial administrators in the Western Region of Nigeria on the eve of the country’s independence, had in 1951 announced proposals for a free and universal education for the region. That revolutionary educational scheme, which was launched in 1955, was an exemplary innovation in the history of education in Nigeria as it marked a radical departure from the hitherto existing educational structure in the entire country, giving the people a sense of self-fulfilment and anticipation for a new era.

This paper highlights the significant developments of the new educational programme, bringing out the salient effects the revolutionary scheme has produced on the economy, social-structure, political consciousness, intellectual life, gender relations, etc. It equally sheds light on the major forces that have shaped the revolutionary trend of western education in Western Nigeria ever since, through changing political scenes in the country: from Parliamentary democracy to Military dictatorship, to Presidential democracy, to Military dictatorship once again, and back to Presidential democracy, during the fifty-year period covered by the paper, from 1955 to 2005.

Paper long abstract

to follow

Paper long abstract

It is truism that Nigeria has adopted education as an instrument ‘par excellence’ for effecting national development (National Policy on Education, 2004, p.iii). In spite of this however, Nigeria has not developed as much as it is expected to after several years of contact with western formal education. The major cause of the several socio-economic problems that ravage Africa in general and Nigeria in particular is traceable to our failure to incorporate African indigenous values into the curricula being used in primary, elementary and tertiary schools in the continent and Nigeria. This is because the current school curricula were adapted from what is operative in American and European countries without a consideration for what values the continent had. This has subsequently led to a great loss of values in the practice of education in the continent and Nigeria. Today, there are many social vices such as corruption, which manifest in economic and political spheres, moral decadence, lack of requisite skills and competencies and the inability of graduate of tertiary institutions to be job creators in Nigeria. Thus, it can be concluded that western education, in spite of its strengths in the areas of science and technology, has not impacted meaningfully on the continent of Africa and Nigeria and has not, in all practical purposes promoted its national development and integration. Since this situation cannot be allowed to continue unchallenged, it has become imperative now to urgently fuse some of the concepts, which can promote the acquisition of appropriate skills and moral values in indigenous education, with what western education can offer the continent in the curricula being used in elementary and secondary schools in Nigeria. This is one way by which the continent will be on the right way to using education to promote national and continent development. This paper therefore, after reviewing the situation painted above, contains strategies of infusing the values in indigenous education to the curricula of formal education in Nigeria so that education can be used to promote national/continent development and integration.

Paper long abstract

This paper will consider how a continued shortage of European administrative agents led the Belgians to institute policies aimed at transferring some junior administrative roles to Congolese auxiliaries, and will examine the development of education provision for those destined to take up such roles. After briefly looking at the causes of the shortage of Belgian recruits to the colonial service, the paper will go on to discuss the early debate over the employment of Africans alongside Europeans, and will then look at the development of the both ‘official’ and subsidised schools for clerks during the 1920s and 1930s.

The expansion of the ‘official’ schools for clerks (écoles des candidats-commis) and the development of their educational programmes in the early 1920s were motivated by pragmatic government requirements. This paper will consider how the limited scope of the programme taught in such schools was meant to avoid the development of an undesired ‘évolué’ class but will argue that such attempts were in fact unsuccessful.

The paper will also look at why the colonial government’s partners in providing education, the Catholic missions, were initially unwilling to support the drive to train more African clerks and why this changed during the 1930s.

Finally, the paper will argue that the development of the schools for clerks during the interwar period offers an illustration of an education policy being entirely motivated by a specific political issue, but that the consequences of its introduction were far more extensive than the colonial government had anticipated.