DECOLONISATION OF THE NIGERIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM
“Does the white man understand our custom about land? How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad…Now he has won our brothers and our clan cannot longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.” These words of the great Nobel Laureate, Chinua Achebe, in his book “Things Fall Apart” are clear pictures of how the coming of the white man into Nigeria has subjected our values to his, which is reflected in everything we do, including our education.
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary, 8th edition, decolonization is the process of a colony or colonies becoming independent. Although it may be argued that there is no logic in the topic because going by the definition of decolonization and the fact that in 1960, Nigeria was freed from the shackles of the colonial government, then, our education system is also free and independent. However, we must note that if all we depend on our after our independence is what our masters left for us, then the simple truth is we are slaves to them in disguise, but in ignorance we fail to accept this fact.
Another major evidence of the colonization of the Nigerian education system is seen in the syllabus we run in most of our schools. Gone were the days when History was made compulsory for every student. But now, we derive pleasure learning about how Columbus came about the name, America, or how Margaret Thatcher was once removed from the office of the Prime Minister of Britain, rather than how Obafemi Awolowo was freed from prison or how Sani Abacha came into power. Even in our tertiary institutions, we have courses like European studies, German and the likes. But where are the Igbo studies or Hausa studies?
Effective education system cannot be achieved where the languages in which people are most creative and innovative are not languages of instruction. Countries with strong education sector maximize their indigenous language as means of impacting knowledge, rather than foreign languages. Germany makes use of German, France French, Korea Korean, Japan Japanese, England English, Russia Russian and many others. However, Nigeria prides herself in allowing English to dominate her indigenous languages.
A step in the direction of achieving the desired goal must necessarily start with the decolonization of the practices of our slave masters. This is very important in the Nigerian education system because, according to Oyelaran (1990), no nation has had a breakthrough through the instrumentality of an alien language. Nigeria cannot be an exception. It’s high time we went to the ancient path of mother tongue education which is a system of schooling, which encourages teaching and learning process in the school child’s first language, even if it is limited to primary education alone. Using the mother tongue, learners learn to think fast, communicate and acquire an intuitive understanding of grammar.
The Summer Institute of Linguistics in 2006, noted that people learn best when they are taught in a language that they understand well. The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural organizations in 2005 also noted that one of the biggest obstacles to education for all program remains in the use of foreign language for teaching and learning.
Also, the learning of Nigerian history should be made compulsory at all levels of education. For if we must indeed move forward, a concrete understanding of our past is very essential.
In conclusion, the senate president, Bukola Saraki, as reported by Daily Trust Newspaper on the 1st of June 2016, said the country’s appalling education system calls for urgent intervention. He also noted that if education problem can be fixed, about 70 percent of the country’s development challenges would have been solved. And I say if we are to tackle this problem effectively, the first thing we must do is to make the sector a reflection of who we truly are rather than a mirage.
