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Teaching History in Twentieth Century Nigeria: The Challenges of Change*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Olutayo C. Adesina
Olutayo C. Adesina*
Affiliation:
University of Ibadan
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Extract

The twilight of the twentieth century saw major developments in the world, which profoundly redefined people's perceptions of and interest in history, both as a mode of enquiry and as an academic discipline. The significance of such changes would appear to have found resonance in the Third World. The most important of these changes included “the revolution in IT, which transformed and democratized scholarship, and the further expansion in higher education; the shift from sociology to anthropology as the most fruitful subject from which historians were now borrowing; the influence of Michel Foucault, postmodernism and the ‘linguistic turn;’ the rise of women's history, gender history, and the reconfiguration of ‘imperial’ history; and a broader shift away from the search for causation to the search for meaning.’ Some of these were to pose serious challenges either to the ways in which history was perceived by civil society or practiced by professionals. It also affected the very possibility of doing history at all. But the details, complexity, and magnitude of the changes varied from country to country in different ways.

In 1993 the “Mission Statement” of the newly-introduced Ife Journal of History gave an indication of the travails of the discipline of history in contemporary Nigeria: More than at any other time, the discipline of history today in Nigeria, is under severe stress. Perplexed by economic crises of immense proportions and dominated by the craze for money and by the politics of the moment, we have become distorted in our orientation and deluded of any deep consciousness of history. We live as if all that matters is today. In private and in public, our citizens are routinely treated to dreary lectures on the irrelevance and insignificance of a systematic knowledge of our past…We seemed determined to go on record as the first nation to make a meaningful progress without reference to the accumulated values, experiences and culture of yesteryears. … The discipline of history is routinely dismissed as dispensable. History which used to be an attractive subject has dropped to the bottom of the ladder of priorities for intending undergraduates. Historians receive little or no regard in a society that is in a haste to modernise and that places emphasis solely on science and the acquisition of material wealth.…

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 33 , 2006 , pp. 17 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2006

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Footnotes

*

This is a revised version of the paper presented at the Special African Studies Conference (Gaudy) 27-29 June 2005, African Studies Centre, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford.

References

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4 For details see Davidson, Basil, The Search for Africa; A History in the Making (London, 1994), 4Google Scholar, where he speaks of “recovering and reinstalling Africa within the equalities of world consciousness.”

5 There have been several writings detailing the experiences and role of academic historians in the creation and nurturing of the discipline in Africa. See, for instance, Ebere Nwaubani, “Kenneth Onwuka Dike, “Trade and Politics,” and the “Restoration of the African in History” HA 27(2000), 229–48Google Scholar; Mildred A.J. Ndeda, “Nationalist Historiography in Kenya: a Look at the Changing Disposition of B.A. Ogot's Works since 1961,” paper presented at the CODESRIA's Thirteenth Anniversary Celebration, December 10-12, 2003, Dakar (available at http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/files/ndeda.pdf); Falola, Toyin, Africa in the Twentieth Century: the Adu Boahen Reader (Trenton, 2004)Google Scholar. Several works have been published on historians such as K.O. Dike, J.F. Ade Ajayi, Bolanle Awe, J. Ki-Zerbo. The mitigating factor for the student aspect of the history of Nigerian universities is Tamuno, Tekena N., Nigerian Universities: Their Students and Their Society (Lagos, 1982)Google Scholar.

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35 Also available at http://www.nopa.net/Labour_and_Productivity/messages/1.shtml.

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39 Available at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2004/36613.htm

40 Steve Sailer, “That Curious Diversity Visa Immigration Lottery” United Press International, 29 July 2002. Also available at http://www.isteve.com/2002_Diversity_Visa_Immigration_Lottery.htm

41 Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Crisis of Research and Academic Publishing in Nigerian Universities: the Twentieth Century and Beyond.” Paper for the 28th Annual Spring Symposium, “African Universities in the Twenty-First Century,” University of Illinois/CODESRIA, Dakar, 25-27 April 2002.

42 This is as true of Ibadan as of other Nigerian universities. It usually formed the subject of discussion with my students, both formally and informally.

43 For a recent work on the Diversity Visa Lottery Program see Law, Anna O., “The Diversity Visa Lottery–A Cycle of Unintended Consequences in United States Immigration Policy” Journal of American Ethnic History 21(Summer 2002), 3–29Google Scholar.

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45 Proceedings of the First International Congress of Africanists, 11.

46 This was actually a student's description of the situation.

47 There was a particular year when only one candidate applied to the department. The shortfall was bridged through the acceptance of applications from those who could not be admitted into their places of initial interest, such as Law and Political Science. Both courses are usually oversubscribed.

48 Peel, Ijeshas and Nigerians, 12.

49 University of Ibadan, Undergraduate and Postgraduate Brochure.

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