| The focus of this study is to critically analyze the fundamental tenets of the Nigerian National Philosophy of Education as delineated in the National Policy on Education, in order to show that, based on the document, decolonization is the more specific purpose of education in Nigeria. The conceptual implications of the term “education for the building of a ‘free and democratic’ society” (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1981, p. 7), as stated in the document, are seriously examined and compared with the arguments presented by Paulo Freire in his works on decolonization of the educational process through the adoption of a transformative pedagogical paradigm.; Essentially, the research presented in this study is focused on the relevance of Paulo Freire's theory of decolonization of education and transformative pedagogy to the Nigerian educational system that has considerably retained the colonial legacy of authoritarianism and selective knowledge production in the schools, otherwise referred to as ‘banking education’. The study centers on the compelling need in Nigeria for a pedagogy encountered by the concerns of freedom, democracy, social justice and social empowerment as exemplified in Freire's analysis of transformative pedagogy. The study explores the strategies for the transformation of conditions of marginalization, which is a shared reality among those that are poor, female, and ethnically disadvantaged in the Nigerian schools. Indeed, the Nigerian educational system, in general, exists within an atmosphere that is encumbered with political, social and economic realities which, oftentimes, prevents students from being.; The decision to hinge the theoretical strength of the arguments proffered in this study on the works of Paulo Freire was pivotal to the very pursuance of this endeavor because of the profound political, historical and educational contexts of his analysis on decolonization. Freire's life and works were clearly geared towards transforming the educational system's traditional fixed scope and sequence curriculum into an interdisciplinary process curriculum with a perspective of liberating education. Applying his thoughts to the contemporary existential conditions of Nigerian schools is, therefore, most timely given the disenabling of Nigerian students, which has been promulgated, in part, by traditional educational practices, the pervasive ‘banking education’. |
