West Africa Review (2001) ISSN: 1525-4488 THE EDUCATION OF LAGOSIANS

Michael J.C. Echeruo

Latin and Greek and Algebra cannot administer to the cravings of an empty stomach.

-- ‘Observer’ May 7, 1887

A correspondent of the Times on January 6, 1881, claimed that “no people, as a people, are more anxious for the advantages of liberal education than the people of Lagos. From time to time, we see the strenuous efforts put forth, and the enormous sacrifice made by parents to secure the great boon for their children.”

A similar view had in fact been expressed in July 1863 by the editor of the Anglo-African:

In order to elevate a people of whom the chief part is sunk into a state of mental darkness and moral depredation, there seems but a single course to be pursued, namely, to provide for proper direction and development of the minds of their youth; for although in an isolated case, now and then, we find adults starting late in life in the pursuit of learning and yet attaining their end, and in a few cases even acquiring distinction, as a rule education must be begun in youth in order to have its due effect on our habits and life.

Education, or more exactly, literacy, had equally tangible attractions then, in addition to enabling people to enjoy what the Observer (May 7, 1887) called “that higher state of advancement into which we are fast evolving by the progress of civilization.” It opened up opportunities for work with the missions; it made it possible to secure appointments with the expanding British administration. Those who could speak English and count to two hundred in English were particularly needed by the trading companies in Lagos and in the interior. In social life, too, education, especially the ability to speak and write English, had obvious advantages. In an aspiring but young community such as Lagos was, this advantage was usually exercised to the detriment of the uninitiated and the illiterate. Lagosians therefore loved their sons to be educated. Indeed, it was not long before even the education of women came to be regarded with an enthusiasm somewhat close to that associated with the education of boys for jobs and positions. The Eagle (June 30, 1883) was full of praise for this recognition among Lagosians of the advantages of educating their daughters.

The subjects taught them are, as far as we know, very suitable; they are directed to make them useful in their homes and generation, and no one would doubt that a greater proportion of responsibility rests on those engaged in imparting education on the daughters of our sons than there would be on the sons. On these daughters rest in after life the bringing up of, and early instilling in the infant, first impressions that for weal or woe, decides the fate of the future generation.

As Henry Carr, the leading African educationalist of the period, put it in a paper read to the C.M.S. Diocesan Conference at Lagos on April 15, 1892, “the education of girls will run on parallel lines with that of boys, and hence, I trust, will ensure security against that want of sympathy in family life, that entire separation in everything, which is a great evil.”

Unfortunately, there was scarcely any organized effort outside the Christian Missions to even lay the foundations of a school system in Lagos. In a way, Lagos was the victim of its own good fortune. It drew many of its top native officials from returning Sierra Leoneans and Brazillians. Most of the illustrious men in early Nigerian history were foreign born and educated: the Rev. Babington Macaulay, Samuel Crowther, Henry Robbin and James Johnson, as well as Rev. S. Johnson, author of the History of the Yorubas. Even Otonba Payne, (Fig. 1),

for many years the Chief Registrar of Lagos, though he completed his education in Lagos, started school in Freetown where he was born. Together they make a long list of distinguished people. Lagos inherited their training and for a long time did not plan for their replacement.

Lagos was also fortunate to have the Institutions of the Church Missionary Society at Abeokuta. There was, first, the Christian Institute (founded 1852) which trained young people for work with the European missionaries in the interior. There was, secondly, the Abeokuta Industrial Institution (1856) which concentrated on the trades, on giving the students some basic training in a technical subject, such as cotton curing, simple accounting, carpentry and joinery. Even in the education of women, Abeokuta led the way with the Female Institution there which was however transferred to Lagos in 1867 following the ifole, the mass expulsion of all Europeans from Abeokuta in that year.

We must not imagine that these Institutions were elaborate undertakings at that time. For example, an early headmaster of the Abeokuta Industrial Institution for a time was one Henry Robbin. He was born in Sierra Leone in March 1835, of rescued slaves, and was sent to England after his Primary school to study and work with a British cotton manufacturing company near Manchester. He came back to Freetown from where he was sent out by the Church Missionary Society to work as their industrial Agent at the Institution at Abeokuta. By any standards, Mr. Robbin did not have very much formal education. But his access to the English language, and his new skill as a cotton expert gave him considerable confidence. In Egba politics of those years, Mr. Robbin was indispensable as a negotiator. In Lagos, where he finally settled, he was a favourite of Governor Moloney and was at one time considered for appointment to the Legislative Council. In Lagos musical and theatrical circles, his name was frequently mentioned with great respect. When he died in March 1887, Lagos went into general mourning. As the Observer put it (March 5, 1887), “in the mysterious dispensation of a Divine Providence, the veil of gloom has been thrown over this community... A life of quiet, unobtrusive benevolence is ended.” Robbin was representative of one type of “educated” Lagosian of the time.

The Abeokuta Industrial Institution itself was not particularly elaborate. Commenting on the report in 1883 that the C.M.S. was planning to shut the Institution down, the Eagle noted the unfortunate error of policy committed by the institution’s Founding Fathers. These pioneers, the paper argued (August 25, 1883),

seemed to have taken an unfavourable view of liberal education, and worked systematically against it. It is not at all our purpose to blame these men: they no doubt had their reasons; but if they could have foreseen what we and those of them still living now see ... the Institution would not have had the same curriculum in common with the elementary schools of that time, a course of studies not adapted to qualify for efficient work in any position however subordinate; instead of men already advanced in life and in some cases hardly able to read and write, the students admitted would have been young men of intelligence and promise with good foundation already laid in the schools ... The Institution has not been always very low, it must be confessed; but at no time of its career has it come up to what we think it should be.

The prominence of Lagos as a centre of education in the Yoruba country dates properly, therefore, from the expulsion of the Church Missionary Society from Abeokuta. It is true that the Lagos C.M.S-Grammar School had been founded as far back as 1859 under the principalship of the Rev. T. Babington Macaulay. But the school started with five out of the six expected students. Indeed so poor was the start that the C.M.S. missionary representative in Lagos, the Rev. Maser, tried to prevent Macaulay from calling it a “Grammar School.” It was not till the 1870’s that this and other high schools were properly established in Lagos. By 1878, the Wesleyan Methodists put sufficient pressure on their Church, and raised enough money themselves, to ensure the inauguration of a Wesleyan High School in Lagos under the Rev. Coppin. In that year, twenty years after its foundation, the enrolment at the C.M.S. Grammar School reached forty for the first time.

This slow rate of growth for the grammar schools can be attributed principally to two factors. One was the habit of sending children to England for training. In this connection, a very familiar feature of Lagos newspapers of the period is the advertisement announcing educational institutions in England desirous of taking on and polishing up the young brains of the Lagos schools. Quite a number of these students went to private boarding institutions which gave them some general education in elocution, music and general culture. The Observer of May 21 and June 4,1887, carried a front-page advertisement of a Ladies Collegiate School run by one Mrs. Seymour of 6 Barnes Villas, Lonsdale Road, Barnes, London who

begs to inform her friends on the West coast of Africa that she is open to receive Young Ladies from the Coast as Boarders at the above address. A thorough English training will be given. French is taught by a Parisienne. Tuition also includes a sound English Education, German, Music, Dancing and all modem accomplishments.

Another of these schools, Queen’s College, Wood Green, London, also published a front page advertisement in the Record, March 5, 1892 (Fig. 2,).

Miss Willoughby begs to inform Parents and Guardians that she receives young ladies from Africa, to whom she affords the comforts of a home with a superior education. She is assisted by a first class staff of Mistresses and Professors. Special advantages are offered for music and Painting. The school is an old established one. Terms from 70 to 100 guineas a year. References are kindly permitted to the Honourable C. J. George, Pacific House, Lagos, and to the Rev. J. Thomas, the Vicarage, Wood Green, London.

The short stay at these British finishing schools was one source of European manners and taste which 19th century Lagos valued so much. Writing on the education of women the Eagle of June 30, 1883 claimed that the Female institution in Lagos (Fig. 3),

only provided its students with ‘that sort of smattering education, that is comprised solely in playing on the piano, and a fondness for dress.’ The paper called for ‘something profound and solid’ which, it felt, could only be obtained abroad.

We do not think that the education of our females can be thoroughly arrived at either in this settlement or any where in West Africa; a good, sound and solid foundation can be laid here, and however much they may be educated here, their education, we nevertheless think is incomplete without their proceeding to a foreign civilized place, if only for a short time; their ideas would be enlarged, and there would be that interchange of thought with other foreign civilized elements that cannot be gained here.

The growth of education in Lagos was also hampered by a second factor—the attitude of the Lagos Government, which had more or less abandoned the task of educating the population to the Christian Missions. Even after the 1882 Ordinance and the appointment of an inspector of Schools, considerable apathy persisted in the administration and supervision of schools. Claiming that the visit to Lagos of the Gold Coast based Inspector of Schools “may be justly asserted with more regard to truth than poetry, to be ‘like an angel visit, few and far between’” the Observer (May 7, 1887) called for a more responsible attitude on the part of officials to the matter of education in the colony. For example, the paper observed, the results of the Inspector’s annual, “or rather, bi-annual and triennial examination of schools,” were still unpublished and though “a new education code intended to embrace the needs of the time is in contemplation,” the public still lacked any official report on the operation to date of the old code. “It is desirable that the views of the educational agents at present employed should be ascertained and expressed in some form and publicly discussed.” The result was that a whole tribe of mushroom elementary schools sprang up all over Lagos. These were all associated with the missions, the competition among which helped to increase the number of schools and to reduce the size of their student enrolment. Many of these schools were situated in the crowded parts of the city where they could draw the largest attendance; but the school structures were poor primarily because finances for better facilities were not available.

Good teachers were not easy to come by either. At the Teachers’ Examination of November 22, 1838, one of the teachers, in answering a question, said India was in America, a reply for which the Observer, on December 15, 1888, demanded that the teacher “ought to be censured by his brethren.” The Teacher Training facilities at Fourah Bay were not supported by the Government until the 1890’s and could not train enough teachers for the entire West Coast. These difficult circumstances notwithstanding, the missions continued to open schools all over Lagos.

These schools were not, of course, altogether useless. They served the community in many ways. Most of the concerts and other forms of entertainment which took place in Lagos during this period were held in school premises. Indeed, it soon became necessary for the schools to initiate and promote such occasions so as to attract crowds and to increase enrolment and patronage. Such an advantage was hardly the primary one for an educational establishment. In April 1898 when the Lagos Government planned to open a Government Technical and Survey school in Lagos, an examination was conducted to fill positions in it. Only eight candidates showed up for the examination and of these, only four passed. The Colonial Secretary had to issue a statement:

As it is proposed to inaugurate both the technical and Survey schools with 8 pupils each, His Excellency has given instructions for another examination to be held in August next. His Excellency is anxious that educational establishments of the colony should prove themselves equal to the task of supplying the required number of pupils for schools, and hopes that special efforts will be made for this purpose by managers and Headmen as otherwise it will be necessary to invite pupils from abroad.

Even as late as 1898, the missionaries who controlled secondary education in Lagos fought hard to retain this control by opposing Government sponsorship of secondary education just as they had opposed the Education Ordinance of 1882. At the instance of Bishop Tugwell a number of Lagosians, most of whom, according to the Record, “could only append a cross to their names,” petitioned the Governor against a plan of April 1898 to have the Government “take up the conduct of secondary education in the Colony.” In a letter of April 30, 1898, addressed to the editor of the Record, a citizen, who called himself ‘Nemo,’ contended that it was:

impossible to understand how people who have any conception of the importance of education, should insist upon a system being upheld the defectiveness of which is so palpable. It is only recently that the community suffered the serious reflection of not being able to furnish a qualified candidate for the post of confidential clerk to the Governor, the post having been filled from the Gold Coast. The interests at stake are too great and cannot be sacrificed to suit the selfish notions of a few.

The thought that a technical and survey school set up for the people of Lagos would have to invite pupils from the Gold Coast to fill its total of sixteen vacancies appalled many Lagosians. A letter to the Record the same April, argued that the problem must be with the system of education itself.

If the secondary educational establishments were efficient, such things could not happen. It is of no use arguing that this particular study (surveying, for example) is not taught. It is the province of the school to impart a foundation on which the student can build in any direction ... As the increased strife of life will always demand a higher standard of education, unless the schools are able to meet this demand, they will almost become useless.

The analysis was absolutely right. Indeed, another correspondent some seventeen years earlier had blamed the Lagos Government for its neglect of elementary education. In 1880, the Lagos Government spent £700 on education out of a total annual revenue of £45,000. In the same year, as the Times pointed out, the Government got approval from London to spend a sum of £16,000 on the Government prison. “What then!” the Times wrote. “Is crime considered a more respectable thing than education, in so much that premium must be put on it by providing for it a palatial and comfortable accommodation?” The paper went on to state the demands of the people of Lagos.

We do not require that the Government should establish for us first class colleges, and import into them highly educated tutorial and professional staff. We do not ask for this, not because we do not care for such provisions, but because, as practical men, and not thoughtless enthusiasts, we know that we shall not have it. We ask for the establishment or support of good elementary schools by the Government with an efficient Inspector at their head.

The Education Code which the Government promulgated in 1882 was essentially a regulatory ordinance. Its primary purpose was to provide machinery for the disbursement of Government aid to schools and for the regulation of standards and methods in such schools. It made no effort at providing for a syllabus. For the primary schools, the Code merely states that the “subjects of teaching shall be reading and writing in English, with Arithmetic, and with plain needlework to females. English Grammar, History, and Geography, may also be taught or not at the option of the teacher.” An important step was taken towards the secularisation of schools by the provisions (reported in the Observer, July 20, 1882) that “direct religious teaching” should not be given ‘in Government schools’ and that no child should

receive religious instruction to which his parents or guardians object or be present whilst such religious instruction is given.... [but] every minister of religion, or person appointed by him, shall have, at appointed time, free access to Government schools for imparting religious instruction to children of his own religious denomination.

The Inspector of Schools, provided for by the Ordinance, was to be based at Accra and paid from the “revenue of the settlements on the Gold Coast and Lagos, in the proportions of two thirds to the former and one third to the latter.” As a result, the supervision of education in Lagos devolved on the Local Board of Education which had responsibility for the certification of teachers, though the power to appoint, dismiss and fix the salaries of teachers was still vested in the Trustee or managers of the various schools. It, however, provided that all teachers then employed in Lagos schools “within two years from the passing of this Ordinance,...shall obtain certificates from the local Board of Education and every teacher hereafter appointed shall hold such certificate and satisfy the inspector as to his competence.”

Before the creation of the Board, Lagos could not really be said to have had a school system. The various Missions operated their schools without standards of any kinds being set or required by the Government. The creation of the Board of Education made a difference to Lagos education. Because of the composition of the Board, it was possible for Government officials (the Governor, the Colonial Secretary, the Chief Justice, the Colonial Treasurer, the Registrar) to hold regular meetings with the missionary proprietors of these schools. At one time, these proprietors included such influential people as Bishop Oluwole, for the Church Missionary Society, the Rev. J. H. Samuel for the Methodist, the Rev. Fr. Demarle, for the Catholics and the Rev. James Johnson for the Independents (1886-1900). The minutes of the meetings of the Board were usually published in full in the Press, and this gave the public their opportunity for comment.

An important feature of policy during this period was the elaborate system of computing grants-in-aid to Lagos schools. Under an earlier arrangement, the Government made annual grants of fixed sums (usually £200) to each of the voluntary educational agencies. Matters now taken into account under the 1887 Code included “average attendance, industrial training, sub-standard passes, general standard subjects, drawing, organization and discipline, special subjects, merits and ‘superior school’ grants.”

As the Record put it in a comment of November 14, 1891, the new system set up a “progressive competitive scheme intended to stimulate increased effort and greater efficiency on the part of those agencies in their work.” There is no doubt that the system worked rather satisfactorily in the intended direction. According to the Inspector’s Report for 1888, grants to Lagos voluntary agencies were to be as follows, based on the results of the year’s inspection:

Commenting on this Report on December 15, 1888, the Observer noted that the Wesleyan Mission was losing nearly fifty per cent of its statutory grant as a result of the inadequacies of its school system, especially its Boys’ and Girls’ High Schools which were granted only £25 of the usual £100 grant. “The Wesleyan Body is a powerful element in the Colony,” the paper pointed out, “and claims by far the largest proportion of the wealthiest and the best educated men in the native section of the community.” The wonder, then, was why “with increased intelligence and culture in its ranks, local Wesleyanism should be taking the last place in educational matters.” The Observer attributed this state of affairs to what it called the “Dual Control System” operating in Wesleyan schools whereby a native “Headmaster” was placed under a European “Principal,” an arrangement was “a scandal on the advanced state of modern Educational Science” and under which “no real solid good work” was possible.

It is not clear whether the Wesleyans actually carried out the Observer’s recommendation to dispense with the services of the European Principal. In any event, the Wesleyan system continued to lag behind the others. In 1890, for example, the student population of the various schools run by the agencies was as follows:

But the grants awarded at the end of the inspection for that year suggested that their performance had not improved appreciably, especially in relation to the awards made to the other agency schools.

Thus the new system made it impossible for the weak Wesleyan Missionary School system even to earn up to the previous fixed grant of £200, whereas the Catholic Mission schools, of which there were far fewer, were able to earn the second largest grant-in-aid from the Government. Quite predictably the Wesleyans came in for a great deal of further criticism from both the Press and the Government inspectors of schools. The Inspector’s Report of 1891 (published in the Record of January 18, 1893) was quite explicit in its criticism.

I wish to invite special attention to the Wesleyan elementary schools. Since the Board Rules came into force, these schools have not yet been able to raise up their heads, and seem every year to be getting nearer the ground. By 1890 they obtained the lowest percentage of passes and have not improved their position during the year under report. Ereko and Obun Eko take the credit for the failures this year; at the recent examination, the two schools failed in opposite directions. In Ereko, the lower standards were completely neglected, and in Obun Eko, the teaching in the higher standard was very poor.

The Report attributed this poor record to four factors: (a) the staff “though numerically good, is far from having what it should be in quality”; (b) “the super- vision exercised over the teachers is altogether inadequate”; (c) “the supply of apparatus is very deficient and defective”; (d) “the teachers have not the qualification for preparing pupils in the higher standards”. The Record therefore felt justified in its earlier comments on the “unsatisfactory position which the Wesleyan elementary schools maintain under the present educational system.” It was no surprise that the Board Meeting of 1896 decided to withhold grants completely from the Wesleyan Schools, Ebute Metta and Erelu, “for failing to attain the required 60 per cent proficiency.”

Another important consequence of the creation of the post of Inspector of Schools for Lagos was the re-examination of the content and structure of the school curriculum. In 1887, for example, according to the Record, the secondary schools of Lagos taught the following subjects to all students during the two years they stayed in the school.

Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and other modem languages, geometry, trigonometry, book-keeping, drawing, rhetoric and logic, moral philosophy and political economy; Roman and ancient histories, mythology and antiquities, natural philosophy in its various branches, astronomy, chemistry, physiology, geology and botany.

The four year Lagos Academy set up in 1888 by Samuel M. Harden (after whom, incidentally, the College of Education at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka was named) claimed to provide instruction in

Reading and Spelling, Writing, Dictation, Arithmetic, Grammar, English Analysis, Geography, Map-Drawing, History (sacred and secular), Algebra, Geometry, Rhetoric and Composition, Physical Geography, Physiology, Natural Philosophy, Logic, Moral Science, Elocution, Book-keeping, Latin, Greek and French.

According to an advertisement in the Observer (March 24, 1888), the motto of the Academy, ironically enough, was “Thoroughness in all we undertake.” The result, as would only be expected, was a great deal of superficiality. In two years, the students came out hardly prepared for any practical occupation, and certainly unable to do anything but imitative intellectual work.

This result was, of course, unintended. In fact, as the Mirror argued on February 18, 1888, the liberal education being given in Lagos had a truly noble purpose.

Knowledge is not acquired for one particular purpose or position in life: rather, the more extensive and varied a man’s acquirements, the more qualified he is for any active and practical business of life.

The argument was already a familiar one in contemporary European educational circles, especially because of the emphasis which the contemporary German universities were continuing to give to classical and liberal education. It was to this emphasis that the Mirror was drawing the attention of Lagosians when it cited an article in the Contemporary Review of 1880 by Karl Hiltenbrand who argued there that

even if it were conceivable that a youth should entirely forget all the facts, pictures, and ideas he should learn from the Classics, together with all the rules of the Greek and Latin Grammar, his mind would still as an instrument, be superior to that of everyone who has not passed through the same training.

In further support of this, the Mirror quoted a banker in “a foreign capital” who would prefer clerks with a classical education to those “educated expressly for commerce in Commercial Schools.” In Lagos, however, the matter was complicated by the quality of the liberal education being offered and the very pragmatic (not to say, unimaginative) attitude of bankers (and other employers) in wanting only workers who already knew something of their trade or profession. It was only to be expected, then, that many of the products of these schools remained unemployed.

On January 6, 1894, one of these unemployed people who signed as “Omo Ijesha” wrote an article for the Record entitled “Does Education Pay?” and answered his question with a round No.

A thousand times no! Had I not wasted my time and energies on the mastering of Latin and Greek, and learning the histories of those same people, but had been initiated thoroughly in shorthand, typewriting, book-keeping or any foreign language, I would now be able to earn a living. Had I in my spare time, been taught a trade of any sort whatever, I would be better off in this hour of need. How many men are there nowadays who have reached most enviable social and financial positions without this absurd cramming of Latin and Greek or mathematics in their teens?

The writer concluded his letter with a plea addressed to parents and tutors “who are anxious as to the training of [their] charges.”

If you have the means of giving those under your care a thorough good education ... at the same time give them something to fall back upon, let them acquire some practical knowledge which at an unexpected moment may come to the rescue ... If the struggles against the nowaday powerful current of competition are not taken up at an early period in life, chances are lost, and little hope is left for the tardy.

One of the personalities responsible for bringing about a change was Henry Carr, who was appointed Assistant Inspector of Schools in 1889, and who in 1892 became the first indigenous Inspector. On the eve of his departure for London in anticipation of this promotion, Carr was given a reception by the educated people of Lagos. At the reception, his role was praised in these terms:

If Africa is to gain a worthy place among the nations of the earth, it depends upon you and me, and others of our sons who are near and far to discover her special line of activity and to make it truly worthy of the acceptance of the whole human family as a contribution to human progress.

In his response, Carr pointed to the special burden imposed on the educated people of Africa in their time.

Our host has spoken of me as a representative. Everybody looks up to every one of us to discern the possibilities of the negro race. Our honour and our shame are not ours alone.

It was in this spirit that Carr carried out his work in the schools of Lagos. He reformed the school syllabus, introduced the study of West African and Yoruba history instead of the study of English History from 1066. He introduced new textbooks into the schools, many of them written in Yoruba. As far as I know, there is as yet no full-scale study of his reform in the Lagos school system.

These reforms, especially in the language of instruction in school, were the subject of considerable debate in Lagos. As would be expected, there were demands for two lines of action. One faction, “the vernacular party,” as the Eagle called it on March 31, 1883, in an editorial on the Education Ordinance,

holds that one thinks well as well as receives impressions better in his own native language, that is, in the language which he has used from his infancy; ... that vernacular should have as much prominence [in the schools] as the English does; that there should be the capitation fees for proficiency in Yoruba; and, that there should be scholarship or at least annual premiums open for competition for Yoruba works in order to encourage the vernacular literature.

The other party, the “Anglo-Yoruba” party, felt differently:

However desirable it is to have a knowledge of a reduced Yoruba literature, the result will not be commensurate to the labour and therefore on the whole a considerable waste of valuable time will accrue to the masses, who have very little of it to spare at school to divert their attention simultaneously to English and Yoruba.... [Moreover] like all other nations of the world, or any other part of Africa, the people will follow power and affluence, and imitate the manners and customs of the conquerors and superiors. We fear this influence is decidedly on the side of the English and not on that of the Yoruba.

The Eagle suggested a compromise which would involve “laying a sound and practical foundation [in English] with all the means and influences at our disposal without disparaging those who take an interest in their native tongue.” In that way, the paper felt, Lagos might be saved from the prospect of

a high-bred [sic] race speaking English to the extinction of the Yoruba language, a spirit which has engendered that foppish and stupid mongrel class of our English speaking population which have done more to damnify English education than any other cause.

In February 1896, Carr submitted to the Legislative Council a draft Education Code which embodied a number of amendments to the original Code of 1891. Two years later he submitted his Final Report. In it he made several far-reaching recommendations many of which testify to his high-minded and progressive attitude to education in Africa. For example, he amended Schedule A (Rule 4) of the old Code to ensure that in infant departments, the “subject and medium of instruction shall be in the vernacular; but as far as practicable the children should be taught both English and Yoruba names of ordinary objects, qualities, and actions and their relations.” This step, he explained, was intended to “legally recognise the educational axiom that a cud’s mother tongue is for it the best and most economical subject and medium of instruction.” The Report complained of the practice in Lagos schools of devoting some one hundred and twenty minutes in two days of the week to Latin (“which in the circumstance they cannot understand and cannot know”) and only sixty minutes one day in the week to reading English, and ninety minutes, two days in the week to English Grammar (“upon the knowledge of which both their life and their livelihood win no doubt in a large measure depend”). His recommendations in this connection were specific:

Greater attention should be given to the study of English. Good authors should be carefully studied in this connection and extracts from them, both in prose and sentences and idioms . . . from English to Yoruba and vice versa, should be frequently and systematically practised. The whole process should offer a field for the exercise of grammar, for acquiring a good sense and good taste in composition and for giving the pupils the power to appreciate and enjoy what they read in English. It is necessary thus to insist on the study of English because for the majority of the boys, the only opportunity they have to learn to speak English is the school; and a parent has a right to expect that his boy, after passing through the highest class in a secondary school, should be able to write an ordinary letter in correct and direct English style.

Carr linked this emphasis on language with equal emphasis on commercial education. He added to the school curriculum a course on

Secondary School Commercial Arithmetic with special reference to rapid calculation and abbreviated methods; Geometry and Geometrical Drawing; Mensuration; Algebra, Shorthand and Book-keeping.... It may perhaps be necessary to add Trigonometry and French for this reason.... It is hoped [Carr concluded] that by the careful and stringent legislation and the increased grants now proposed, the children who come within the scope of the advantage of the Education Code will profit by the higher instruction offered to them, and repay to the country, by their improved talent and industry, the value of the public funds that would be spent upon them.

The Record was right in its tribute to Carr when it called him “henceforth a representative man. He may have successors; he has no predecessor.”

Carr’s reforms were not entirely new in educated Lagos circles. Indeed, the credit due to him derives from his recognition of the dual need for a literary as well as a technical education, as opposed to the enthusiasm of those who only wanted a practical kind of education without due attention to general culture. This fact is basic to any appreciation of the pattern of educational development in Lagos during this period. The C.M.S. Industrial Institution at Abeokuta under the Rev. Venn had expressly forbidden the teaching of the liberal arts to its students on the assumption that a liberal education would corrupt the young and breed presumptiveness among them. In time, however, it began to be believed that the only kind of education suitable for the African was the practical sort. That kind of education would keep him out of realm of ideas (where he could hardly be expected to excel) and place him comfortably in the kind of world he was used to, the world of the farms and the workshop. The argument was probably well-meant, but it led understandably to resentment as increasing numbers of Africans sought the same academic training in the arts and in law that was available to citizens of other countries and other races. Hence the high premium placed on the arts and the professions, and the very low opinion they held of the practical or the mechanical arts.

On January 16, 1895, the Record published excerpts from a report by a certain Mr. George R. Stetson of Washington on the “Educational Status of the Negro and its Relation to his industrial and Economic Development.” The Report, as would be expected, insisted on the differences between the races which required differences in the way they were to be educated.

At the moment, the Negro is intellectually, morally and industrially inferior to the Western Aryan and a system of education to be of service to him, must honestly, practically and philosophically, recognize this difference in the present development of the two races.

The need, therefore, was to concentrate educational effort in two areas: moral and industrial.

I think the education of the Negro along the lines now pursued an impossibility. They should be taught in manual training and industrial schools, and should be made to understand that no man can live without work.

It was against all the racial implications of this point of view that Lagos reacted in the 19th century, a curiously complicated response about which historians of Nigerian education have told us very little.

The position changed, of course, as soon as Lagosians realized that it was possible to encourage industrial training without accepting the racial prejudices associated with it. Their position also changed when the demand for increased staff for Government and business mounted; and when employment opportunities for the products of the liberal arts schools continued to diminish. On July 4, 1896, the Record published the Government’s “Prospectus” for the Lagos Training College and Industrial Institute.

It is the policy of Her Majesty’s Government, in view of the enormous responsibilities they have undertaken in Africa, to avail of native talent and ability where it can be found; but, alas, examples of such talent and ability are few and far between. The object of the Training College is to furnish a source of supply from which competent men for the public service in all the colonies may be drawn.

Government initiative in this case was thus closely related to Government’s staffing problems.

The Lagos public, for its part, looked at the need for technical education from a different angle. They were unhappy enough about the poor remuneration offered to technical and industrial trainees by Government and business. They were even more unhappy that specialized technical positions in the local service were being filled from other West Coast colonies. The Observer (April 2 and 16, 1887), was astonished that the “cry of the community at the present moment is unmistakeably the jubilee [of Queen Victoria], the jubilee! the jubilee!!!,” whereas “it is a sad fact to think upon that literally, and to a limited extent figuratively also, not even a pin is manufactured in the colony.” The paper urged that those responsible for the jubilee arrangements would, in addition to “laying the foundation stone of the Glover Memorial Hall and giving a Banquet,” supplement this with “some scheme having for its object the establishment of schools of technical education in the colony.” Again, on May 7, 1887, the paper returned to the subject and emphasized the absolute need for a programme of technical education for Lagosians:

It is imperative that the education of the youths of this colony should be more strictly technical; that they must be made to anticipate business pursuits and the life they would have to lead... We want technical schools for every trade, for every profession and every occupation in life. Latin and Greek and Algebra cannot administer to the cravings of an empty stomach.

On June 10, 1896, a month before the Government Prospectus was issued, the Standard had associated itself with the demand for technical education. A month after the Prospectus, the Record published an extended editorial on the “Education Scheme.” “We do not expect that our people generally will at once grasp the full meaning and force of the new educational departure,” the paper warned. The previous (liberal) education system was “superficial and artificial,” the result of “confinement to the mere letter of the books and its application to a foreign race without knowing its meaning for us, and to the neglect of the industrial teaching and practice which our aboriginal relatives without books or schools have acquired.”

The new departure then would hopefully bring Africans back to themselves and teach them their “true place in the economy of humanity.”

All receiving without giving is mean and contemptible, just as all giving without receiving is folly and extravagance . . . We hope we have said enough to excite the sympathy of all lovers of their country and all reasonable people on behalf of the youth whose characters are yet to be formed. We cannot be indifferent to the youth, and it is our duty to see, as far as we now understand matters, that they shall not be subjected to the same mistakes which have distorted us - that they shall have fair play and free field as Africans, as they enter into life.

In this new realization, Lagos thinking was tremendously influenced by the opinions and careers of two men: Dr. Edward Blyden of Liberia and Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee in the United States. For many years Lagos had at its disposal the facilities of Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone. Consequently, though the need for an institution of higher learning was felt in Lagos, it was never as urgent as it did become when the C.M.S. closed Fourah Bay College to those laymen “desirous only of receiving University qualifications.” In reporting this decision, the Record (October 14,1893), reminded its readers of the trend in the past whereby

the children of well-to-do parents in order to acquire a high class education must of necessity be absent from home for a long period of time in England under the great risk of ruining their health and the greater danger of for- getting their personality; while the youth of the poorer class but of equally good, if not better ability, are deprived of the privilege of further education that our schools can give.

The paper therefore argued for the establishment of a University College in Lagos. According to the paper, a meeting of some local people some years earlier (Dr. Blyden and Archdeacon James Johnson attended) had suggested that a company be “started with a capital of a few thousand pounds” to manage the undertaking. The enterprise seemed to be on the way when “suddenly followed that unpleasant silence which is always the knell of almost every scheme undertaken by the Negro.” The matter was taken up the following week by ‘Veritas,’ one of the paper’s columnists. He felt convinced that Lagos was “quite able” to found an institution of higher learning “if only men of means in them will put off the garb of selfishness and don themselves with superior vestments of true nobility, a quality which posterity will greatly admire and praise.” The well-to-do families of Lagos “who have the means of sending their children to England but at a great risk” may not appreciate the need; but “surely, the poorer class are deprived of the privilege of giving their children high education within their reach and at a moderate expense.”

The Lagos Training College and Industrial School was the nearest they came to having the institution of their dreams. Quite naturally, they tried to model it on the lines of Blyden’s Liberia College. Dr. Blyden had defined the aims of Liberia College quite clearly, and the Standard was quick to reproduce Blyden’s words on June 10, 1896.

We must have men trained amid the scene of their future labours, - men who can enter at once upon the work knowing what is to be done, who need neither mental nor physical acclimatization, who know the specific methods in this country for performing industrial, commercial, educational and religious work, who will know how to live in the country, and in the towns, who if necessary can walk 200 miles under their bare feet [sic], doing exploring and scientific work, who can take the surveyor’s chain and compass through swamps and over mountains, without the accessories of hammocks and beasts of burden, umbrellas and water-proofs, who as missionaries who will not long and pine for bacon and beans, peaches and pears, broad- cloth clothes and beaver hats.

The Editor applied the lesson of this manifesto to the particular case of Lagos.

If the Institution now in contemplation in Lagos can produce the kind of men described, we shall consider that a great work has been done for Africa and the Race. We shall then be independent of foreign trammels and shall be far more respected by foreigners and have more complete access to our brethren of the interior.

Booker T. Washington was the second major source of inspiration. His Tuskegee College was founded to give practical training to negro youths as a means of encouraging the self-confidence which he said was so obviously lacking then in the American Negro South. Professor Washington was, moreover, a “successful” negro by the standards of the times. In 1896, when he was honoured by Harvard University in a public ceremony, the Record sent a telegram of congratulations.

West Africa sends its congratulations across the Atlantic to Booker T. Washington on the distinction which has been so appropriately conferred upon him, and wishes for him a continuation of the energy, enterprise and commonsense which have thus far distinguished his career.

The tribute was based on the conviction expressed by the Record on August 15, 1896, that

Mr. Washington believes in work, and he has demonstrated that in spite of his disadvantages in America, the Negro can be a producer ... The important work which he has done in the Black Belt, no white man could have done, and no Negro but Mr. Washington has as yet proved himself capable of doing it... Mr. Washington is an instructive example.

Lagos hoped that their new Institution would fulfil a similar purpose in Africa.

It is tempting today to point out all the glaring limitations and failures of the educational programmes of 19th century Lagos. Indeed, it has become fashionable to take the century to task for not laying the proper foundations for Nigerian reconstruction and development. It ought perhaps to be appreciated (and this is the main lesson of this review of the past) that 19th century Lagos made its own sincere efforts to provide its youth with a relevant kind of education. They were acutely aware of some glaring shortcomings. In his Inspector’s Report (1898), Henry Carr was disturbed by the fact that some Lagos students

leave school still ignorant of English but with their memory stored with disjointed fragments of Latin declensions and conjugation which will rapidly disappear soon after their school days are over.

There were other fundamental weaknesses, and these were not noticed only by Government Inspectors. On June 25, 1898, one Lagos teacher wrote a lengthy letter to the Record analysing the causes of “backwardness” in Lagos secondary schools. He rejected the idea that the Education Code was entirely “chargeable with many of the unsatisfactory results observed in these schools.” There were at least four major reasons, two of them crucial. The first was the “shaky foundations” laid in the primary schools. “Our boys are hurried over the length and breadth of what they are taught without sounding its depth,” with the result that “all serious and unsparing efforts after subsequent improvements generally prove unavailing.” The second was what he called ‘the tendency of our youths towards intellectual aversion,” an “ingrained antagonism, a natural repulsiveness to learning.” Contributing to this aversion was the general “atmosphere” of Lagos which he described as “not learning-loving, but money-loving.”

The spirit of commercial enterprise is a very commendable one and serves to indicate in a people its great desire to acquire that wealth which consists, as Political Economists say, in commerce and industry. But when boys begin such business at school they are sure to do it to the exclusion of other useful things; once they are seized with a passion for money-making, they are sure to neglect learning for a vain pursuit of this fugitive false god.... [The] evil [he concluded] has now attained such a luxuriant growth that unless it is promptly stamped out, it will soon mean a total ruin of education in this colony.

Let us then say, in fairness to them, that Lagosians were not really indifferent to their educational responsibilities. if we must blame them for their general failure to provide the ideal basis for present-day education, we should also remember that they had a very serious disability in not having an idea of the kind of community that was later to mature as 20th century Lagos. And the failure of educational systems is invariably the failure to predict and anticipate the future.

From Echeruo’s Victorian Lagos, chapter 3, 1st Published 1977.

Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

Echeruo, Michael (2001). THE EDUCATION OF LAGOSIANS. West Africa Review: 3, 1.