Paradoxes of Decolonisation: University College Ibadan and the Late Colonial State

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The chapter considers the politics of Nigerian university development from 1948 to 1960, including who lectured at University College Ibadan, how the staff was ‘Africanised’, university autonomy, ‘special relations’ with the University of London, and university finance. Livsey argues that University College Ibadan formed part of the ‘second colonial occupation’ of Africa and the growth of the late colonial state. In some ways it exemplified the continuing authority of British norms, but the university also weakened British control. It opened Nigeria to the influence of foreign institutions and formed a prominent site where the terms of development and decolonisation were contested. Nigerians held the university to account in newspaper columns and in legislatures, showing how this colonial development project was, in practice, negotiated.