Universal Primary Education in Nigeria: A Study of Kano State

Abstract

This brief treatment of universal primary education (UPE) is the best I have seen thus far. Although it is technically restricted to Kano State, its breadth of analysis and historical framework give it a strength belied by the subtitle. Bray is a lecturer in education and development at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. The book is based on the author's Ph.D. dissertation at Edinburgh (1980). Among the qualities that place it above the ordinary is the perception that, like the UPE schemes of the 1950s, Nigerian universal primary education is a political phenomenon. This perception results in a wider and deeper analysis, for which Bray seems well equipped. For example, both his handling of the earlier efforts at UPE in the former Western and Eastern Regions, and his history of educational development in Kano State, 1900-1976, are workmanlike and insightful. For instance he shows that the size and grandeur of the earlier projects lent them credibility rather than its opposite by contrast with the niggardly, too little and too late, measured intervention of the colonial era. The swift, even surprising onslaught gave the projects impact, no matter what shortfalls even miseries would later be recounted. With respect to educational history in the North, Bray emphasizes that efforts to develop linkages between Western schooling and the Koranic practitioners is anything but new, and current difficulties with mallams in public educational establishments would not have surprised Hanns Vischer or E.R.J. Hussey. Bray has organized his study into six chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion. The introduction itself is very meaty (information about Kano State), and the conclusion goes beyond its summary format not only in its second part, devoted to answering the question, What do planners and politicians learn from experience? but in several tantalizing observations. Nigeria, he points out, did not indulge in the nonformal education fashion of the seventies. Is it better or worse off? Nigeria may be producing a subclass of dissatisfied unmodern individuals. To what political movements might they turn? The six chapters are as follows: (1) The national perspective, including the story of the earlier attempts at UPE, (2) Education in Kano State, (3) UPE since 1976 in Kano State and throughout the federation, (4) Measures of quality and efficiency, (5) UPE and employment, and (6) The social impact of UPE. Support for his findings in his copious notes is more than adequate. This reviewer was impressed with the range of his interviewing, the extensive use of scholarly studies of related topics and problems, and the amount of incidental intelligence supplied in the notes. Students of UPE and of education in Kano State will make good use of his excellent bibliography. Tables and charts as well as maps render the book a handy research tool especially for Kano State. In seeking to provide a preliminary balance-sheet on UPE in Kano State, Bray ran up against a lack of clarity about the goals at the national level. Moreover the lack of unanimity in the vociferous criticism that has been launched against UPE throughout the North,