ABSTRACT
For the purposes of this chapter, three periods may be identified in the development of Western-type education in Nigeria: the colonial period (from 1842 to 1959), the early independent period (from 1960 to 1970), and the post-civil war period (from 1970 until the present). It can also be established that education in the two earlier periods was more functional and made more positive contributions to the economy and public affairs of those periods. Writers fired by certain anthropological considerations, which are outside the scope of this chapter, prefer to include a period earlier than the country’s contact with the missionaries to recount certain practices in traditional society through which young people were integrated into their various communities (Fafunwa, 1974 and Ojike, n.d.). Nevertheless, there appears to be little or no argument about the complementary nature of the Western-type education and such practices to each other. For obvious reasons, neither system could have served the purpose of the other. The fact that the two have continued to coexist most harmoniously in many parts of the country testifies further to the difference in their functions.
