Basic Importance of the 1882 Ordinance

The 1882 ordinance was important in the history of education in Nigeria for some obvious reasons:

1.  It was the first colonial government formal pronouncement on education in Nigeria; It brought out a regulatory body to monitor and control the excesses of the various Christian mission schools; 
2.  It encouraged expansion of schools as well as government establishment of schools; 
3.  It encouraged the admission and education of helpless children; 
4.  It gave opportunity for the establishment of industrial or technical school and teacher training institutions. 

Exercise 4:

• Read the eleven point provision and identify more underlying importance of the ordinance. 

Problems of the 1882 Ordinance

One of the problems of the ordinance was that it was not purely a Nigerian ordinance. It cut across Lagos and Accra (Nigeria and Ghana). Other serious limitations of the 1882 ordinance were:

1.  The ordinance was almost identical with the English Elementary Education Act of 1870 that was targeted to satisfy the needs of England at that time; 
2. Both the Board of Education and the local Board was a direct importation of English Board of Education and the school Boards. These carbonized arrangement or importation were not suitable for Nigeria. For instance in England then, there were different administrative units which made it suitable for school Boards to function. But it was not so in Nigeria. Hence, the Board system was unsuitable for the schools; 
3. The clause on religious instruction inserted into the 1882 ordinance was copied from the Cowper-Temple Clause of English Education Act of 1978, which was aimed at resolving the religious controversy among the English people. There was no such need in Nigeria then, for there was no religious tension and no denominational controversy among the various mission schools; 
4. The curriculum, the medium of communication (English) and the method were too foreign to the Nigeria child; 
5. The proposed system of grants-in-aid was not well spelt out and so was found unworkable and ridiculously complicated by the man, Metacalfe Netcalf Sunter, (the Inspector) who was appointed to administer the system; 
6. The ordinance ignored the genuine aspiration and demands of the local people (Nigerians) to develop their local language as a vehicle to education (Osokoya 1975 pp. 31-32, Amaele, 2003). 

Rev. Metcalfe Sunter, who was the former principal Fourah Boy College, and a product of Christian Missionary School was appointed the first Inspector of Schools for the British West African colonies.

Unfortunately due to the cumbersome nature of the ordinance, the General Board did not perform and the Local Boards were never constituted. Few schools qualified for government’s financial aid, while the inspector of schools had much to do, that at the end he did nothing. It was obvious that, at the end, the 1882 Education ordinance failed to achieve its purpose.

4.0 CONCLUSION

Western education which begin in 1842 through the efforts of the missions, gradually gained the interest of the British colonial government which took political power in 1861 in Lagos.
The government was reluctant initially on education matters but, gradually became involved through grants-in-aid and the ordinance on education of 1882.