Re-Engineering Educational Administration for Quality Education in Nigeria

Re-Engineering Educational Administration for Quality Education in Nigeria

Introduction
Education has evolved in Nigeria even prior to amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorate in 1914. The most active period of the development however began from 1950 when the constituent part of the country (Northern, Eastern and Western region) became self-governing (Sambo, 2005). Following division of Nigeria into Northern, Eastern and Western regions when Richard’s constitution came to effect in 1947, Nigerians became the sole policy makers for the educational system. The three geo-political regions had ministry of education under the leadership of education ministers of education who were mainly responsible for educational policies in each region. Director of education in each region handled the implementation of the policies. At the national level, the director general of education was coordinated by the regional educational systems. In 1955, the Joint Consultative Committee on education (JCC) was established as a major organizational directly involved in educational activities in the country.
It is obvious from Nigerian industry of education that the period (1950 – 1975) brought western education to limelight, increased access of Nigerian to formal education through efforts of the regional governments and voluntary agencies. The Nigerian educational statistics had it that in 1947, the number of pupils in primary school was 626, 000 while in 1960, it rose to 2912619. In the same vein, the number of post-primary schools in 1955 was 161 but 912 in 1960 with the population rising from 9908 in 1947 to 140, 401 in 1960 (Imahe, 2001). The two main reasons adduced to the increases were the government continued grant-in-aids to voluntary agencies and direct establishment of government and local government schools, community post-primary schools and private post-primary schools.
At the above formative years, one major problem of education was that it was colonial in...