Educational system and national development in contemporary Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examined the role usually played by an education system in precipitating social change and the consequential effects of this relationship on the national development of any country. Although, the level of development attained by Nigeria today has been identified as the basic implications of formal education on social change, the educational system seems to be very slow in stimulating changes in the nation as expected by the public. This study is a survey research which adopts a pure qualitative method particularly as it depends on secondary sources of information for facts to support the study. This study discovers that the slow tendency of Nigeria's education system in stimulating social change has been one of the reasons why Nigeria has not been able to make her appearance in the comity of developed nations of the world until now. The paper also discovers that the slow tendency of education in stimulating changes in Nigeria has been engineered by ethnocentric forces, corruption, inappropriate funding of education, failed leadership, etc. The implication of this on national development is that the wheels of change which result in making countries part of the globalized world seriously clogged. Thus, it was recommended that Nigeria should avoid centrifugal and ethnocentric sentiments on national issues if education is to function as an instrument of social change in Nigeria, amongst others.