The colonial-era university: an experiment in capacity building

Timothy Livsey, Birkbeck, University of London

This paper has two goals. First, it considers the relationship between scientific capacity building,
usually seen as a partnership between developed and developing countries to increase the capability
of individuals and groups in the latter to discharge scientific and technical tasks, and social capacity
building, which increases i di iduals a d g oups social and cultural prestige.1 The paper suggests
that scientific capacity building can, and perhaps necessarily does, build social capacity. Scientific
capacity building has therefore not been a purely rationalist, technocratic process, but has been
bound up with the political, social and cultural histories of specific locations. Second, the last section
of the paper shows how conceptions of capacity change over time. From the 1930s to the 1960s,
there was broad agreement that African universities would build scientific capacity in ways that
benefitted Africans, but the 1960s and 1970s saw this consensus collapse, with deleterious
consequences for scientific capacity.
The paper draws on my PhD research on the place of Nigerian universities in histories of
development and decolonisation, and recent work exploring the ways development has been a
negotiated, contested process by Monica van Beusekom, Joseph Hodge, and Julia Tischler.2 This
paper brings these perspectives to bear on higher education. I am not a scientist, nor a historian of
science. Nevertheless, I hope that that this paper will contribute to our thinking about the ways in
which notions of scientific capacity have been constructed by historical actors. I would be pleased to
hear your comments, suggestions and criticisms on the thoughts presented here.
The first university in Nigeria was University College Ibadan, founded in 1948 under the auspices of
British authorities. It was one of a network of universities founded across the empire in the late
1940s that was partly the product of a new de elop e talist app oa h to go e i g the e pi e. As
independence in 1960 neared, Nigerian politicians started to plan new universities. Four were
founded between 1960 and 1963. Yet by the end of the 1960s, the excitement about the role of
universities in African development was fading fast.

Part 1: Nigerian conceptions of capacity

When University College Ibadan was founded in 1948, western forms of education were well
established in southern Nigeria. The importance of western education there pre-dated formal
colonial rule. Before the British annexation of Lagos in 1861, western educated Africans, many of
1

O s ie tifi apa it , see E a Ha is, Building scientific capacity in developing countries , EMBO Reports 5/1
(2004), 7.
2
Monica M. van Beusekom, Negotiating Development: African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du
Niger, 1920-1960 (Portsmouth, NH, 2002); Joseph M. Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of
Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens, 2007); Julia Tischler, Light and Power for a
Multiracial Nation: The Kariba Dam Scheme in the Central African Federation (Houndmills, 2013).

them former slaves, had established themselves as an elite group. The Nigerian minister Rev.
Thomas Babington Macaulay founded the first grammar school in Lagos in 1859, before the
annexation.
The coming of colonial rule increased the importance of formal education. Literary education in
particular opened the way to prestigious jobs in government and European commercial firms. It
offe ed a oute to esta lishi g atego i al e ualit
ith the olo ise s, th ough sha i g si ila
3
knowledge, qualifications and lifestyles. Education to perceived foreign, and especially British,
standards formed a vital aspect of the identity of a small colonial-era southern Nigerian elite.
Education was valued more because it built social than scientific capacity. The importance of literary
education was reflected in the emphasis of teaching at the many secondary schools founded by
Nigerian communities.4
In 1934, the British colonial government established Yaba Higher College in Lagos. It was intended to
increase, economically, the scientific capacity of the colonial state, by training Nigerians for post as
assistants in the medical, education, and public works departments. Yaba students received a
diploma tenable only in Nigeria rather than a degree, ensuring that they remained in junior positions
within the colonial state and were paid less than colonial officials.
Nigerians did not welcome Yaba as building scientific capacity. Most commentaries argued that it
offe ded edu ated Nige ia s aspi atio s, gi i g the lesse ualifi atio s a d sala ies, thus not
creating the social capacity associated with literary education. A March 1934 rally attracted 545
people which, according to the Nigeria Daily Times, eje ted Ya a as p o oti g the isolatio of
Nigerian youths from the outside world and set[ing] up a false sta da d of alues i the ou t .5
Nigerian members of the Legislative Council bombarded the colonial government with questions
about the status of Yaba qualifications, and it was petitioned to allow Yaba students to sit for full
degrees.6 In colonial Nigeria, then, the social capacity built by literary education was often perceived
as more important to immediate elite political and social objectives than scientific capacity.

Part 2: UCI and hybrid conceptions of capacity

The planning of University College Ibadan saw educated Nigerian elites, British academics and
colonial officials produce a university development consensus. It grew out of the rancorous 1930s
debates about Yaba. Nigerian protests about Yaba were received sympathetically by a British
colonial establishment that increasingly linked its international reputation to colonial development.7
A review of colonial higher education in London led to the creation of the 1943-45 Elliot Commission
on Higher Education in West Africa, which created the blueprint for University College Ibadan.
3

O atego i al e ualit , see Richard Wilk, Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from
Buccaneers to Ecotourists (Oxford, 2006), 70.
4
J.F. Ade Aja i, The de elop e t of se o da g a
a s hool edu atio i Nige ia , Journal of the Historical
Society of Nigeria 2/4 (1963), 519-23.
5
Nigerian Daily Times, 19 March 1934.
6
See, for example Nigeria Gazette, 8 February 1934, 14 June 1934.
7
See, for example Stephen Constantine, The Making of British Colonial Development Policy 1914-1940
(London, 1984), 228-32.

Unusually for the time, the commission included three West African members (one, the headmaster
Rev Israel Ransome Kuti, was the father of the legendary Nigerian Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti),
although most members were British academics and politicians.8 The Co
issio s 19 tou of
West Africa included well-attended public hearings, which allowed Nigerians to convey their
aspirations directly to the Commission. Debates about Yaba were invoked. The Yaba Ex-Students
U io a paig ed fo a u i e sit ollege affiliated to a B itish u i e sit . The a gued that the do
not want another West African University to confer local degrees, because they believe that this will
i ti e e o e hat the all A othe Ya a College Affai .9
The African Elliot Commission members actively intervened in deliberations to advance their vision
of a university embodying British standards. When the British biochemist H.J. Channon proposed
that students of a West African medical school should only receive a locally tenable diploma until it
was recognised by the British General Medical Council, for example, Ransome Kuti disagreed, writing
o! i the a gi of his op of the d aft.10
His objection was incorporated into the final report, showing how the Commission produced a
hybrid university blueprint that incorporated the concerns of a variety of West African and British
interests. For the Elliot Report, a West African university would build scientific capacity to deal with
local problems, like soil erosion and cocoa plant diseases, although the Report also ensured the
university would build social capacity.11 It would initially award internationally recognised University
of London degrees under a sche e of spe ial elatio s . The Report argued that university
education would enable African students to e a le the to take thei pla e i the o ld of lea i g
of to-day as equals, in every sense of the word, capable of comradeship with their contemporaries in
any land, deserving and receiving, in their chosen fields, the confidence and support of their own
people .12 The Elliot Report thus incorporated both scientific and social capacity building agendas.

Part 3: UCI and capacity

University College Ibadan was founded in 1948 largely to the Elliot Commission blueprint. It taught
sciences and included a medical school. But it also taught the arts, awarded London degrees, and
was a consciously elite institution. Even when the university was housed in temporary huts, the
former edi al stude t Adafe Jaja e alled that he lea ed the t aditio of ei g p ope l tu ed
out. We d essed ell although ot e essa il ea i g a tie o oat .13 When the university moved to
its new modernist campus in 1951, life became still grander. Former student Victoria Onafowokan
8

The other West African members were K.A. Korsah, a Ghanaian lawyer, and E.H. Taylor-Cummings, a Sierra
Leonean doctor. The British members were Walter Elliot and Arthur Creech Jones (MPs), J.R. Dickinson (a
retired colonial officer), and Bernard Mouat Jones, James Duff, H.J. Channon, Margaret Read, Julian Huxley, Sir
Geoffrey Evans, Eveline Martin, and A.E. Truman (academics).
9
Southern Nigeria Defender, 3 January 1944.
10
Fi st D aft Chapte VI .d. [19 ] , Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan, Africana Collection, Kuti
Papers Box 24.
11
Report of the Commission on Higher Education in West Africa, Cmd. 6655 (1945) (hereafter: Elliot Report), 2,
6-7.
12
Elliot Report, 2.
13
Bunmi Salako, Our UI (Lagos, 1990), 11.

e e e ed, the t a sitio f o

a a k like p efa s to su h a hite tu al pie es of e elle e as
ep ese ted ou p ide o ou su ou di gs. We fitted sple didl i to a life of ste a ds .14
Many Nigerians welcomed the contrast between the university and Yaba Higher College. The
Nigerian Tribune o g atulated I ada s fi st p i ipal ith a edito ial e titled B a o, D Mella
,
15
hi h oted that his o s shi e i o ld e a i atio s . The a pus i p essed as ell. Only such
uildi gs efit a g eat atio , ote Chu a Ajaeg u-Mgbakor, a Lagos businessman, in the Daily
Times.16 When UCI was criticised, it was usually not because of its style of capacity building, but
because it was not doing more. There were objections to the low student numbers and limited
subjects taught, particularly the slow development in education and engineering.17
The emphasis on British standards that built social capacity could fit uneasily with scientific capacity
building. In medicine, for example, the scheme of special relations with London required a teaching
hospital operated to British standards, which disqualified existing Ibadan hospitals. UCI medical
students were sent to Britain for clinical training until 1957, when a huge new teaching hospital was
opened. It was excellent, but formidably expensive. The London medical degree was also poorly
suited to Nigeria in some ways. Difficult to pass, it lacked the emphasis on preventative medicine
and public health that would have been useful in Nigeria.18 There were similar problems in
engineering. Nigerian engineers belonged to British professional bodies. When these institutions
modified their policies due to changing British circumstances, the changes had to be replicated in
Nigeria regardless of their usefulness there.19 The construction of social and scientific capacity was
thus not necessarily complimentary.

Part 4: New Nigerian universities and capacity

Despite these problems, the university model represented by Ibadan proved tenacious. This could be
see as elated to a olo ial sig atu e of po e , a d B itish i stitutio s u dou tedl pla ed a
important role in establishing norms in Nigeria.20 Many ambitious Nigerians actively demanded
these standards, however, further investing them with prestige. This posed problems when Nigerian
politicians started planning new universities in the 1950s. One of the best known is the University of
Nigeria, Nsukka, whose planning was led by Nnamdi Azikiwe.
Nsukka is often interpreted as offering a radical alternative to Ibadan. It was explicitly focused on
capacity building in science and technology, and included vocational studies that were not available

14

Salako, Our UI, 46-7.

Nigerian Tribune, 15 August 1952.
16
Daily Times, 3 January 1953.
17
On engineering see West African Pilot, 9 March 1948; Southern Nigeria Defender, 23 April 1949.
18
Kenneth Mellanby, The Birth of Nigerias University (London, 1958), 164-5.
19
I.C.M. Maxwell, Universities in Partnership: The Inter-University Council and the Growth of Higher Education
in Developing Countries, 1946-70 (Edinburgh, 1980), 29.
20
Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, 1994), 284.

15

at Ibadan, including librarianship, architecture and fisheries.21 Nsukka was supposed to be less elitist.
Azikiwe had criticised student residence at Ibadan, telling the House of Representatives in 1954 that
the e as o i t i si alue i est i ti g the stude ts of the u i e sit to eside tial status. Ve
few modern universities of the world adopt this athe est i ti e a d a hai p a ti e .22 Finally,
Nsukka sought assistance from the United States, whose land grant universities were perceived as
offe i g a u i e sit odel ette suited to a de elopi g ou t s eeds tha I ada s i of
Oxbridge and London.
Despite the discourse of radicalism around Nsukka, it had many similarities to Ibadan. It taught arts
subjects. It was in fact, like Ibadan, a residential university, included a grandiose sports stadium, and
instituted practices like gown wearing, ega dless of Aziki e s iti is s of UCI. Aziki e had also
intended that Nsukka would be affiliated to the University of London, although the arrangement fell
through.23 Some Nigerians criticised Nsukka for its differences from Ibadan. )ik a ts a Ya k-style
u i e sit at ut ates , the Daily Times reported, and the public response to Nsukka is characterised
by the historian Nduka Okafor as luke a , al ost hostile .24 Aziki e s s he e as g eeted ith
suspicion partly of the importance Nigerian elites pla ed o u i e sities so ial apa it uildi g
functions.
Ne e theless, the dis ou se a ou d Aziki e s p oje t as i tu e ith the i te atio al o se sus
about universities in national development. A major 1962 UNESCO conference on the Development
of Higher Education in Africa, held in Madagascar, called for universities to emphasise scientific
capacity. It set a target for 60% of students to study science subjects, compared to 34% at the time
of the conference, and called for simpler buildings and lifestyles at African universities.25 Like the
Elliot Report fifteen years previously, however, the UNESCO conference still perceived universities as
crucial to scientific apa it uildi g, dee i g the the ai i st u e ts of atio al p og ess .26
Aziki e s pla s fo Nsukka unfolded in the context of this broad international consensus about
universities and scientific capacity building.

Part 5: The decline in euphoria about universities and capacity

The confidence at the UNESCO conference about the potential of African universities to build
scientific capacity and transform the continent turned out to be short-lived. An interlocking set of

21

Easte Nige ia, U i e sit of Nige ia La E ugu, 19 , 1 -14; B.I.C. Ijo ah, The origins and philosophy
of the u i e sit , i E. O ie hi a, C. Ike a d J.A. U eh eds. , The University of Nigeria 1960-85: An Experiment
in Higher Education (Nsukka, 1986), 4.
22
th
rd
Nigeria, House of Representatives Debates. Third Session, 13 to 23 August 1954, 265.
23
I te -University Council Executive Committee Conference with Dr Azikiwe and the Eastern Nigeria Minister
of Edu atio , 1 No e e 19 , The National Archive BW 90/603.
24
Eric Ashby, Universities: British, Indian, African. A Study in the Ecology of Higher Education, with Mary
Anderson (London, 1966), 267-8; Nduka Okafor, The Development of Universities in Nigeria (London, 1971),
172.
25
UNESCO, The Development of Higher Education in Africa: Report on the Conference on the Development of
Higher Education in Africa. Tananarive, 3-12 September 1962 (Paris, 1962) (Hereafter: UNESCO Report), 34
26
UNESCO Report, 13.

local, national and international crises saw the optimism about universities, scientific capacity and
national development come tumbling down in the 1960s and 1970s.
Nigerian universities were affected by crises connected to the destructive dynamics of postcolonial
politi s, that sa state esou es as a atio al ake hi h the politi al pa ties competed to divide
in self-interested ways. This was manifested in factionalism at Nsukka and Ife universities between
staff supporting rival parties, and in ethno-political disputes at the University of Lagos that
culminated in a student stabbing the newly appointed vice chancellor in 1965.27
These problems in Nigeria were fed by the international confidence in universities as motors of
de elop e t. High e pe tatio s of u i e sities t a sfo ati e po e p o a l e a e ated the
Nigerian university crises,
aisi g the pe ei ed stakes i politi al i al ies o e the o t ol of
universities. These heightened expectations gave way to growing doubts. The problems at Nigerian
universities seemed to fit into a global pattern of disenchantment with modernistic planned
de elop e t, u i e sities a d s ie tifi apa it . This as the e a, fo e a ple, of the e e ts of
1968, the Ronan Point disaster in Britain, and the formative years of post-modernist architecture.
Disenchantment with modernising postcolonial African elites, amongst Africans and western
governments, can be seen as a further facet of this moment.
At Ibadan doubts grew about the university. In the early 1970s Vice Chancellor T. Adeoye Lambo
came to see his university as ingrained with colonialism. He described it as su -colonial , a d
e plai ed that the u i e sit inherited a lot of things. I am talking now in terms of facilities. It is a
eside tial u i e sit .28 Some Nigerian academics, like the historian E.A. Ayandele in 1973,
despaired of the Nigerian educated elite as, i his o ds, a otle of t ouse ed a d f o ked
u les ues ith a e ee of este
ultu e .29
International donors too viewed developments at postcolonial Nigerian universities with unease.
The British and American government had hoped that their assistance to Nigerian universities would
help to educate modernising elites sympathetic to their interests. Instead, they worried that African
universities created a factionalised, corrupt elite that was a barrier to economic, political and indeed
scientific development. By the mid-1970s Britain and the United States were retooling their
development assistance to focus on rural development and basic level technology. The World Bank,
too, became disenchanted with the African university.30 Booming 1970s oil revenues allowed the
Nigerian state to found more universities, although links with western academe waned. When oil
prices declined in the later 1970s, and the World Bank structural adjustment programme was
imposed in the 1980s, Nigerian universities suffered badly, shorn of domestic and foreign funding.

27

On Nsukka see John Hanson, Education, Nsukka: A Study in Institution Building Among the Modern Ibo, with
Magnus Adiele, Pius Igboko and Charles Okpala (East Lancing, 1968), 24-5, 30. On Ife see Vincent
Chukwuemeka Ike, University Development in Africa (Ibadan, 1976), 191-4. On Lagos see Saburi O. Biobaku,
When We Were No Longer Young (Ibadan, 1999), 113.
28
Quoted in John D. Hargreaves, The idea of a olo ial u i e sit , African Affairs 72/286 (1973), 26.
29
E.A. Ayandele, The Educated Elite in the Nigerian Society (Ibadan, 1974), 2.
30
See, for example James S. Coleman, University Development in the Third World: The Rockefeller Foundation
Experience, with David Court (Oxford, 1993), 311-22.

The scientific capacity that had been built through substantial Nigerian and foreign investment
deteriorated as it was no longer seen as a productive, respectable route to broader developmental
goals.

Conclusion
Today the World Bank is once again optimistic about the place of African universities in economic
development and scientific capacity building. Scientific capacity building is closely enmeshed with
social capacity building, and can have often overlooked political and social implications. Conceptions
of scientific capacity are also historically contingent, changing over time through the interaction of
local, national and transnational dynamics. Perhaps the chief problem with scientific capacity
building is that conceptions of efficacious, socially just routes towards such development invariably
change, meaning that the achievement of scientific capacity often seems tantalisingly out of reach.
This opens the temptation of abandoning the capacity which has been laboriously built, as with the
1970s and 1980s disinvestment in Nigerian universities, because it no longer fits with the latest
visions of progress.