Mass Communication Education and Careers in Nigeria: A Preliminary

Discourse

Introduction
The formal system of journalism and mass communication education
training in Nigeria and other African nations has suffered serious neglect
in the early beginning (Akinfeleye, 2008).
This is because both colonial rulers in Africa and their succeeding African
Europeans‘ regarded media education as an unnecessary undertaking‖
(Akinfeleye, 2008, p.98). That is why the pioneers of journalism and other
communication professions are people from other disciplines that have
developed interest in journalism practice, and they were mainly trained
through on-the-job training. Ali (2005, p.105) noted that: Journalism
training in Nigeria is as old as journalism practice itself. When the
profession‘or practice was introduced into Nigeria, only a few
practitioners, if any, had formal journalism education. The trend was that
they entered into journalism with other qualifications and simply learnt the
practice on the job from others who also learnt it from others who also
learnt it under similar circumstances. However, the development in socio-
economic and political sector in Nigeria and Africa in general has
contributed in transforming the journalism education system to the
advanced stage. ―Today in Africa the number of journalism training
institutions in English and French-speaking African countries has doubled
(Akinfeleye, 2008, p.100). Mass communication education in Nigerian
higher institutions is one of the several academic programmes that were
designed toward realizing the main goals of the tertiary education in
Nigeria. These goals were specified in the Nigerian National Policy on
Education (2004, p.30):