EDST Doctoral Colloquium – African History and the Decolonization of the Nigerian Secondary School History Curriculum

PCN 2012
Thursday March 6th, 12:30 – 2 pm
Oladipupo Ogunfeibo

The nationalists’ struggle for self-determination in the 1950s and 1960s in many British and French African colonies took on the scholarship in African history as one of its resistance strategies. In its diverse form (as a concept, discipline, socio-cultural and political project, field of study, and school curriculum), African history emerged largely to reject the Eurocentric construction that ‘Africa’ and ‘Africans’ had no history until its encounter with European colonizers. In dismissing the Eurocentric distortion of Africa and reclaiming and reaffirming African history through literature, arts, politics and education, scholars have drawn on diverse forms of postcolonial theories (Marxism, ecocritical theory, critical theory, feminism, historical and many others), which have also been influential in different attempts at decolonization.

However, particular conceptions and approaches to postcolonial and decolonial discourses in education have left unresolved and further entrenched patterns of colonialism. This dissertation looks at postcolonial attempts to decolonize and legitimize particular political discourses. Taking the Nigerian context as a case study, this study seeks to (1) problematize the postcolonial and decolonial construction of African history and (2) explore what particular ideals and practices associated with African history offer a more plausible approach to decolonization. Using archival methods in exploring policy documents, school curricula, textbooks and other publicly available documents, this study asks: (a) What does the scholarly debate about history education among the academic and professional organizations in Nigeria reveal about how the notion of African history is constructed? (b) What does a critical discourse analysis of the Nigerian secondary school history textbooks reveal about the meaning and representation of decolonization? (c) How does this approach to seeking decolonization impact Nigeria’s secondary school educational system?