The educational legacy of colonialism in south-western Nigeria

The educational legacy of colonialism in Nigeria is a contested and controversial subject. What do those who lived through the colonial period remember? And what do they think is both positive and negative about education in that period? To allow their voices to be heard, 20 interviews with educationalists, teachers, lecturers and students involved in colonial education were undertaken in Nigeria and the UK. Many of those interviewed are famous and influential figures both in Nigeria and internationally. Their attitude to the legacy of colonialism is not what Western writers and academics may think. As Nobel Prize winner, Wole Soyinka, said in an interview for this thesis, although we must condemn colonialism: “One can’t throw away the baby with the bath water. When we needed education, they brought education. It does not matter how, but education was brought.” There were many aspects of the colonial legacy that those who lived through the period thought benefitted education in Nigeria. The ‘colonial masters’ recognised that all human culture was important, and in the part of Nigeria that formed the focus of this research, all schooling for the first four years was in the local language, Yoruba. The colonialists passionately believed that both men and women should be educated. They enhanced local education by, for example, developing a local counting system as the basis for mathematics. They brought with them the English language, a legacy that has given Nigeria access to a wider range of knowledge and facilitated membership within international communities. Colonial education was an imposition that people wanted; however, there were many limitations to the education offered. When the colonialists established secondary schools, the purpose was not merely to educate people but to train them to be civil servants who would serve the colonial government. The voices from the post-colonial period, discussed and questioned here, say the unsayable: there was a positive legacy of colonialism.