IMPACT OF EDUCATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NIGERIAN ECONOMY

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

Education is an age long phenomenon in all societies although it may take various forms from one society to another. In Nigeria two forms of education were in existence before the advent of colonialism. They were indigenous education and Islamic education. Traditional education as was practiced in the southern and some parts of the middle belt Nigeria, consisted essentially of general but informal training in character, norms, agriculture, fishing intellectual and other ways of life as approved by society. Islamic education on the other hand was practiced mainly in Northern part of Nigeria. It is based on the Quran. Both forms of education preceded the Western education which was introduced to Nigeria in the 19th century by the European Christian missionaries. The advent of colonialism brought about formal education in Nigeria. The colonialists had to organise the training of the indigenous people to understand the Queen’s language. The Christian missionaries organised schools and trained Nigerians the art of reading and writing. The initial persons that were trained in the communities became the first indigenous persons to be employed by the colonial government as interpreters, clerks and teachers. It did not take long before the benefits of formal western education became manifest in Nigeria. The regional governments of independent Nigeria expanded educational opportunities, building more schools and providing grant-in-aid to missionary schools in their respective regions especially in the southern regions. Expanded educational facilities were seen as the panacea to the manpower needs and overall development in post colonial Nigeria. The role of human capital formation in economic development has long been recognised in the literature. According to Harbison (1973, p.3), “human beings are the active agents who accumulate capital, exploit natural resources, build social, economic and political organisations and carry forward national development. Clearly, a country which is unable to develop the skills and knowledge of its people and utilise them effectively in the national economy will be unable to develop anything else”. Several other theoretical and empirical studies have found a positive correlation between human capital development and economic growth ( Lucas, 1958; Romer, 1990; Barro, 2001; Abbas and Foreman – Peckb 2007). Education – formal and informal, contributes to skill acquisition. Informal education begins at the household level where children are taught how to sweep, clean their environment, fish or farm. By participating in these activities they learn how to do things by themselves and contribute to family income growth. Although such incomes are not recorded in national income accounting, they nevertheless amount to substantial family income. According to Schultz (1962), formal education is a kind of investment in human being that enables them to acquire skills. Such skills raise the marginal product of the worker itself and also help to raise the marginal product of the other co -operant factors. Thus human capital has a unique character – it enters the production function as a factor of production and also as a marginal product augmenting variable. The latter makes the marginal rate of return on capital and other inputs rise continuously so that the unexplained growth rate explains the Solow’s surplus