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ISSUE:    Pedagogy. Theory & Practice. 2025. Volume 10. Issue 8
COLLECTION:    History of Pedagogy and Education

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Stages of the formation of higher education in Nigeria in the 20th century: from colonial colleges to national universities

Gabriel Ayodeji Obimuyiwa
Kazan Federal University

Leila Leonardovna Salekhova
Kazan Federal University
Submitted: August 21, 2025
Abstract. The objective of the research is to identify the impact of colonial heritage, national aspirations, and the dynamics of political events on the formation and development of Nigerian universities after independence, including the colonial period (1914-1960), and up to the end of the 20th century. The work aims to reveal the persistent structural effects and discontinuities in the development of higher university education in Nigeria. A historical analysis of archival materials, including the Elliott Commission Report on Higher Education in West Africa from 1945 from the National Archives of the University of Ibadan (CSO 26/36214), provides an opportunity to describe in detail the formation of the Nigerian university system in the context of the existing contradictions between the traditions of the colonial higher education system and the decolonization strategy. Developing countries, including Nigeria, in modern conditions, on the one hand, are dependent on former European colonial powers, and on the other, strive for an independent path of development. The work highlights the contradictions between: the Western educational paradigm established in Nigeria and nationally conditioned ways of knowing; the development of universities along geographical and ethnic trajectories and the need to create a unified landscape of university education; and the massification of education that arose after the oil boom of the 1970s and its quality. The scientific novelty of this historical-pedagogical research consists in identifying five stages in the genesis of Nigerian higher university education in the post-colonial period, i.e., the 20th century, their features and characteristics. The research findings show that some higher education institutions were created on the basis of the British system, such as the University College Ibadan (1948). In other universities, after independence, changes took place in the configuration of higher education in the interests of national development, for example, in such as the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (1960), but this process was contradictory and uneven.
Key words and phrases:
история развития высшего образования в Африке
постколониальное образование
университеты Нигерии
деколонизация в области высшего образования
history of higher education development in Africa
post-colonial education
Nigerian universities
decolonization in higher education
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