1.0 INTRODUCTION There were three fundamentally distinct education systems in Nigeria in 1990. The indigenous system, Quranic Schools and formal European-style education institutions. In the rural areas where the majority lived, children learned the skills of farming and other work, as well as the duties of adulthood, from participation in the community, this process was of ten supplemented by age based schools in which groups of young boys were instructed in community responsibilities by mature men. By the 1970s, education experts were asking how the system could be integrated into the more formal schooling of the young, but the question remained unresolved by 1990. Western-style education came to Nigeria with the missionaries in the mid-Nineteenth century. Although the first mission school was founded in 1843 by Methodists, it was the Anglican Church missionary society that pushed forward in the early 1850s to found a chain of missions and schools. Followed quickly in the late 1850s by the Roman Catholics in 1887 in what is now Southern Nigeria, an education department was founded that began setting curricum requirement and administered grants to the mission societies. By 1914, when North and South were United into one colony, there were fifty-nine government and ninety-one mission primary schools in the South;

1.0 INTRODUCTION There were three fundamentally distinct education systems in Nigeria in 1990. The indigenous system, Quranic Schools and formal European-style education institutions. In the rural areas where the majority lived, children learned the skills of farming and other work, as well as the duties of adulthood, from participation in the community, this process was of ten supplemented by age based schools in which groups of young boys were instructed in community responsibilities by mature men. By the 1970s, education experts were asking how the system could be integrated into the more formal schooling of the young, but the question remained unresolved by 1990. Western-style education came to Nigeria with the missionaries in the mid-Nineteenth century. Although the first mission school was founded in 1843 by Methodists, it was the Anglican Church missionary society that pushed forward in the early 1850s to found a chain of missions and schools. Followed quickly in the late 1850s by the Roman Catholics in 1887 in what is now Southern Nigeria, an education department was founded that began setting curricum requirement and administered grants to the mission societies. By 1914, when North and South were United into one colony, there were fifty-nine government and ninety-one mission primary schools in the South;