Babs Fafunwa remains one of the most important figures in the history of Nigerian education. More than fifteen years after his death, the questions that dominated much of his academic life are again at the centre of national debate: what language should Nigerian children be taught in, how should schools relate to their cultural environment, and how much of an inherited educational system should a postcolonial society retain?
Aliu Babatunde “Babs” Fafunwa was born in Isale Eko, Lagos, on 23 September 1923. He became an educationist, university professor, administrator, author and Federal Minister of Education. The Fafunwa Education Foundation, which he founded in January 1995, describes him as the first Nigerian Professor of Education.
His historical importance, however, rests on much more than that distinction. Fafunwa spent decades questioning whether Nigerian education could achieve its full purpose if schools remained intellectually detached from the languages, histories and social realities of the children they were intended to educate.
That argument became especially visible in his scholarship on the history of Nigerian education and in the celebrated Ife Primary Education Research Project, where Yoruba was used extensively as the language of instruction while English was taught separately.
Nigeria’s renewed struggle over language policy has made that legacy impossible to dismiss as a debate belonging only to the twentieth century.
Babs Fafunwa and the Question Colonial Schooling Left Behind
Fafunwa grew up under British colonial rule, when formal education in Nigeria was heavily shaped by missionary and colonial institutions.
He attended CMS Grammar School in Lagos before continuing his education in the United States. He studied at Bethune-Cookman College in Florida and later pursued graduate education at New York University.
He eventually became one of Nigeria’s leading specialists in education at a time when independence was transforming the country’s political and intellectual landscape.
Nigeria attained independence in 1960, but political sovereignty immediately raised another question: how much of the colonial educational structure should remain unchanged?
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Fafunwa became closely identified with the argument that independence should involve more than changing the nationality of those administering schools. Educational aims, curricula and teaching methods also had to address Nigerian conditions.
This did not mean that he rejected Western education.
His own career demonstrated the opposite. He had studied in the United States, worked within modern universities and participated in international educational organisations. His argument was that acquiring international knowledge did not require Nigerian schools to treat indigenous cultures or languages as intellectually inferior.
Modern education, in his view, needed to be relevant to the society it served.
Building Teacher Education at Ife
Fafunwa worked at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, before becoming closely associated with the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University.
Professor A. Babs Fafunwa was appointed in October 1966 to plan the development of a Department and Faculty of Education at Ife.
Teacher education courses began during the 1967/68 academic session. The university’s Provisional Council approved the creation of a Faculty of Education in October 1967, and Fafunwa became its pioneer dean.
His involvement in teacher education was significant because the rapid expansion of schooling after independence required Nigeria not only to build more schools but also to produce teachers capable of working in a rapidly changing education system.
For Fafunwa, teaching was not merely the delivery of inherited material. Teachers were central to shaping a form of education that could connect modern knowledge with Nigerian society.
His institutional work therefore complemented his intellectual arguments. He was not simply writing about reform. He was participating in the creation of structures through which Nigerian educators could be trained.
Rewriting the History of Nigerian Education
One of Fafunwa’s most influential books was History of Education in Nigeria, first published in London by George Allen & Unwin in 1974.
The significance of the work lay partly in where Fafunwa chose to begin the story.
Rather than presenting Nigerian education as something introduced by Europeans, he treated indigenous African education as part of the country’s educational history. He also examined Islamic education and the later development of Christian and Western education.
This widened the historical frame.
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Long before modern classrooms, certificates and formal examinations existed, communities possessed systems through which children and young people learnt occupational skills, moral responsibilities, social obligations, religious ideas, cultural practices and community history.
Fafunwa therefore challenged the assumption that societies without European-style schools had no meaningful educational institutions.
His interpretation did not deny the transformative impact of missionary schools, colonial government education or modern universities. Instead, it placed them within a much longer history.
That approach became an important part of his broader philosophy. Nigerian education could modernise without beginning from the assumption that indigenous knowledge had no educational value.
The Ife Six-Year Primary Project
Fafunwa’s most famous contribution to the language debate came through the Ife Primary Education Research Project, commonly associated with the Six-Year Primary Project.
The project began in 1970 and continued through the decade.
Its central question was ambitious: could Yoruba-speaking children receive sustained primary education through Yoruba without suffering academically or losing the ability to learn English effectively?
The experiment was more sophisticated than simply replacing English words with Yoruba words.
Curriculum materials had to be developed. Teachers had to be prepared. Appropriate terminology was required for subjects that had traditionally been taught through English.
Instructional materials were developed for mathematics, science, social studies, Yoruba and English. Teacher preparation included workshops and training connected to the experimental curriculum.
English was not removed from the education of the pupils.
It was taught as a separate subject while Yoruba served as the main instructional language for experimental pupils across the primary school years.
That distinction is fundamental to understanding Fafunwa’s position.
He was not arguing that Nigerian children should be isolated from English. The project investigated whether a child could learn difficult concepts more effectively through a familiar language while developing English competence alongside that education.
The project produced favourable educational results and became one of the best-known African experiments in sustained indigenous-language instruction.
Why the Experiment Still Matters
The importance of the Ife project extends beyond Yoruba.
Its deeper historical contribution was that it moved a major educational argument from assertion towards experimentation.
Questions about African languages in education were frequently caught between cultural nationalism on one side and assumptions about the superiority or practicality of colonial languages on the other.
The Ife project attempted to test what actually happened when an indigenous language was given a sustained role in formal instruction.
Yet the project also had limits.
It took place within a particular linguistic and educational environment. Nigeria is a vast multilingual federation. Schools in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt and other rapidly growing urban areas may contain children from numerous linguistic backgrounds.
A model demonstrated among Yoruba-speaking pupils cannot simply be copied across every Nigerian community without considering local circumstances.
Textbooks must exist in the relevant language. Teachers must possess sufficient linguistic and subject competence. Scientific and mathematical terminology must be usable and consistent. Examination structures must be considered. Children who move between linguistic regions must not be placed at a severe disadvantage.
English also remains important in Nigerian higher education, administration, national examinations, business and international communication.
The enduring value of Fafunwa’s work is therefore not that it supplied one effortless answer for every school in Nigeria. It demonstrated that the educational role of indigenous languages deserved serious investigation rather than automatic dismissal.
From the Classroom to Federal Government
Fafunwa’s career eventually carried his educational ideas into national public service.
His appointment as Minister of Education was announced on 29 December 1989 during the military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida. Ministerial chronologies commonly place his tenure in the period from 1990 to 1992.
His years in office came during a difficult period for Nigerian education. The system was dealing with rapid growth, financing problems, teacher conditions, university tensions, access to schooling and continuing arguments over educational structure.
Fafunwa therefore entered government with decades of experience as a scholar and education administrator, but ministerial office also confronted him with the difference between educational theory and the enormous practical demands of governing a national system.
His public service formed another dimension of a career that had already included teaching, research, university administration and educational writing.
Nigeria Returns to the Language Question
The modern importance of Babs Fafunwa became especially clear again in 2025.
On 6 February 2025, during an Extraordinary National Council on Education meeting in Abuja, the Federal Government opened a renewed discussion about the role of mother tongue instruction.
By April, the National Council on Education had approved a review of the National Language Policy.
Minister of State for Education Professor Suwaiba Sa’id Ahmad also drew attention to major differences in implementation. Some states were using mother tongue instruction to Primary Three, others to Primary Six, while some practices extended even further.
The situation demonstrated one of the major difficulties of nationwide language policy in Nigeria: national rules did not necessarily produce uniform classroom practice.
The debate reached a decisive stage later that year.
In November 2025, following the 69th National Council on Education meeting in Akure, Ondo State, the Federal Government announced that English would remain the medium of instruction from primary through tertiary education.
The government discontinued the previous policy mandating indigenous language as the main instructional medium in the early stages of schooling.
Federal authorities cited several problems, including Nigeria’s extensive linguistic diversity, shortages of appropriate learning materials, inadequate preparation and deployment of teachers, inconsistent implementation among states and difficulties in the transition to English.
The decision did not mean Nigerian languages had been prohibited from schools.
In January 2026, Education Minister Maruf Tunji Alausa clarified that indigenous languages had not been banned. Nigerian languages would continue to be taught as subjects. The policy change concerned their prescribed role as the principal medium of instruction.
By August 2026, the Federal Ministry of Education’s Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative continued to list the discontinuation of traditional languages as a mode of instruction among its policy milestones.
Nigeria had therefore returned, in a different political and educational environment, to a question Fafunwa had spent decades confronting.
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What Fafunwa Did and Did Not Argue
Fafunwa is sometimes reduced to the simple idea that Nigerian children should be taught only in their mother tongue.
That does not accurately capture his work.
The Ife experiment included systematic English instruction. Its central challenge was not whether pupils should learn English, but whether English had to be the principal language through which they first encountered mathematics, science and other academic subjects.
Neither was Fafunwa attempting simply to restore precolonial education.
His scholarship took indigenous systems seriously, but he spent his professional life working within modern universities and educational institutions. His objective was adaptation and synthesis.
He wanted modern education to recognise local realities rather than reproduce inherited structures without reflection.
It is equally misleading to treat the Ife project as proof that one language policy would automatically work everywhere in Nigeria.
The experiment demonstrated possibilities within a specific setting. National policy must deal with linguistic diversity, migration, teacher supply, textbooks, examinations, administration and the practical needs of millions of pupils.
In the same way, Nigeria’s 2025 return to English as the principal instructional language does not erase the historical significance of the Ife research.
An educational experiment and a nationwide administrative policy answer different questions.
Conclusion
Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa died on 11 October 2010 at the age of 87. His death ended a career that had spanned teaching, scholarship, university administration, educational experimentation and federal public service.
His influence remains visible.
He helped establish teacher education at the University of Ife. He wrote one of the major histories of Nigerian education. He insisted that indigenous systems belonged within the historical study of education. Most famously, he helped make language of instruction an experimental educational question rather than simply a political slogan.
Nigeria’s policy direction has changed repeatedly since the Ife project began in 1970. Governments have expanded, modified and reversed approaches to indigenous-language instruction.
The underlying challenge, however, has survived every policy change.
How can Nigerian children gain strong foundational understanding while also acquiring the English competence required for national and international participation? How can schools respect cultural and linguistic diversity without making education administratively unworkable? How can modern scientific knowledge be taught without making Nigerian languages and experiences appear educationally irrelevant?
Those questions explain why Babs Fafunwa continues to matter.
His greatest legacy may not be a single policy that Nigeria must permanently adopt. It is the insistence that education must be examined in relation to the society, language and culture of the people it is designed to serve.
Author’s Note
Babs Fafunwa’s life demonstrates that educational independence is more complicated than political independence. His scholarship and the Ife Primary Education Research Project challenged Nigerians to consider whether a modern school system could be genuinely national while remaining detached from the languages and cultural experiences of many of its pupils. At the same time, his career within universities and government showed that he did not see indigenous knowledge and modern education as enemies. His enduring lesson is that effective education requires both intellectual ambition and practical adaptation. Nigeria’s continuing debate over language in the classroom shows that the questions he raised have outlived the policies, governments and institutions within which he first posed them.
References
Fafunwa, A. B. History of Education in Nigeria. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974.
Fafunwa, A. B., Macauley, J. I. and Sokoya, J. A. F., eds. Education in Mother Tongue: The Ife Primary Education Research Project, 1970–1978. Ibadan: University Press Limited, 1989.
Fafunwa, A. B. “Education in the Mother-Tongue: A Nigerian Experiment, the Six-Year Yoruba Medium Primary Education Project at the University of Ife, Nigeria.” West African Journal of Education, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1975.
Fafunwa, A. B. Memoirs of a Nigerian Minister of Education. Macmillan Nigeria Publishers, 1998.
Obafemi Awolowo University. Faculty of Education: Institutional History.
Fafunwa Education Foundation. Institutional Biography of Professor Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa.
Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council. “Hon. Minister Visits NERDC, Promises Intervention on Infrastructural Revamp.” 9 April 2025.
Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation. “FG Reaffirms English As Medium Of Instruction, Launches Inclusive Language Policy To Promote National Unity.” 13 November 2025.
Federal Ministry of Education. Nigeria Education Sector Renewal Initiative: Policy Milestones. 2026.
Educational Resources Information Center. Records of the Ife Primary Education Research Project and Fafunwa’s work on mother tongue education.
