Ibadan School
intellectual tradition in the study of the history of Nigeria
The Ibadan School of History was the first, and for many years the dominant, intellectual tradition in the study of the history of Nigeria. It originated at the University of Ibadan, in Ibadan, Nigeria, in the 1950s, and remained dominant until the 1970s. The University of Ibadan was the first degree-awarding institution to open in Nigeria, and its scholars played major roles in setting up the history departments at most of Nigeria's other universities, spreading the Ibadan historiography. Its scholars also wrote some of the textbooks that were used at all levels of the Nigerian education system for many years. The school's output is often considered to be most clearly embodied in the "Ibadan History Series".
Nwaubani argues that Kenneth Dike (1917–83) was the first modern scholarly proponent of Africanist history. His publications were a watershed in African historiography. With a PhD from London in 1940, Dike became the first African to complete Western historical professional training. At the University College Ibadan, he became the first African professor of history and head of a history department. He helped found the Historical Society of Nigeria and the National Archives of Nigeria.
“Ibadan School” enters the record as intellectual tradition in the study of the history of Nigeria. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ibadan, School and intellectual can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ibadan School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.