DECOLONISATION OF NIGERIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM
Colonisation no doubt contributed tremendously to the development of the Nigerian economy and its effects reflect in the system with which certain sectors of the economy are run, examples are the application of the knowledge of industrialization of natural resources to produce better and more refined goods in Agriculture, Local and international trade of goods and services, Educational policies and curricula. These we have held unto and have continued to be of benefit till date.
Colonisation played a huge role in development of education from its medieval stage, that is the period when only traditional education existed and was enacted orally. From introducing the knowledge of how to read and write, to introduction of the 6-3-3-4 system of education, to teaching industrially-applicable skills and training the colonized on economy management, the system has yielded capable products.
Although colonisation fruited these benefits, that wasn’t all it did. Explorers, anthropologists and missionaries were deployed to grow their knowledge of the continent and in turn use it to exploit and dominate native populations; this knowledge would now be passed unto the colonised and they believed that colonisation was indeed good for them seeing as the same knowledge was employed successfully to colonise them.
This has caused the Nigerians, even after the colonial era, to see things from their colonialists’ perspective, value their values without looking back at what our values used to be before colonisation. Locally made textbooks are usually degraded to not being qualitative enough as the foreign ones and so we are taught what white men have written, so we grow up and pass on their knowledge without giving the next ourselves and the generations after the benefit of knowledge derived as a product of our own research and discoveries, and we also deny ourselves the motivation or confidence that comes from desirable products of our own self-made efforts to acquire more knowledge through other means or from our own point of view and not those of the whites.
An important factor that impedes sound learning is inappropriate communication. If only students were made to learn things at school by communicating with them using their native language and then teach English as a second language, there would be sound comprehension and there wouldn’t be the about 36% (of the entire population) illiteracy in Nigeria, and the youths, rather than looking for jobs, hawking things in traffics, engaging in fraudulent activities and robbery, would, with the knowledge they have gained, be contributing to the economy positively, even if they eventually become jobless.
Looking at the Industrial sector of the economy, only about 30% of our top industrial establishments are owned by Nigerian entrepreneurs, and even lesser having a board of directors or shareholders consisting solely of Nigerian or even African entrepreneurs. Most graduates of universities, undergraduates and even postgraduates in this part of the world have this sense of “working for an establishment” being the only mode of utilization of their earned licenses and certificates at school. This is the path that the learning system created by the whites and that we imitate, sets us in or the perspective it makes us see from. We could create a system where we don’t see “working in an establishment” a compulsory doctrine, a system where we are made to look in the path of setting up our own firms after sufficient experience has been acquired or even by just partnering with experienced people and creating job opportunities for the jobless lot.
Even other countries come to Nigeria to set up establishments and employ Nigerians to work for them. What colonisation have we freed ourselves from if we still work for foreigners in our country for a little percentage of the realised profit of the firm , when we can just tailor the minds of our students as would suit economic growth by using the required and our own self-made educational system or curriculum to fit the situation and not still depend on that we have been made to understand by the colonialists or by that we see that works for them.
Nigeria needs to make her education system about understanding herself first, not other nations and thus set all her citizens in the path of a better Nigeria by learning her values, cultures, problems and discovering possible solutions. What Nigeria needs to ensure this is the decolonisation of her educational system.
