Abstract

This dissertation examines the educational potential of traditional agriculture in building a new Nigeria especially in a period of rapid social and cultural changes. It argues that, despite the recent growing importance of other sectors, agriculture including forestry and fishery will remain a key factor in Nigeria's economic and social development. If a rural transformation is to take place, it necessarily will involve not only the absolute expansion of agricultural activities but a whole range of changes necessary to raise the level of national consciousness, agricultural productivity and incomes. ;The major economic and political developments in Nigeria can best be explained in terms of its agriculture, an ancient industry which tends to explain the various movement of people and the growth of social institutions or towns. A truly Nigerian agriculture favors a philosophy of agricultural development which emphasizes the organization of and assistance to small-holder farmers as the center-piece of development activities in the ethnic communities. ;The Trado-Modern Agricultural Model, envisaged within the concept of transcendental communalism, will greatly help set a national tone that is necessary to generate a more productive agriculture, and so bring the benefits of the green revolution to the people. For the improvement of the agrarian sector, technical or agricultural education will have to precede indigenous moves towards industrialization. ;On a closer examination, those alien forces which had occupied Nigeria, for example, the colonial institutions that governed the maintenance of a labor supply in the country, have invariably impeded the development and diffusion of modern technology. The colonial educational system gave minimal consideration to adapting Western education and technology to the environmental conditions of differing ecologies. The establishment had failed to underscore the great contribution that scientific research and the adaptation of technology could make to economic development. However, the post independence agricultural reorganizational consciousness in Nigeria has endeavored to reverse the chilling effects of colonialism on both the traditional and modern agriculture in the country. ;Given the economic developments that have already occurred in former British colonial Nigeria and the direction and movement of financial resources down to the mid-1970's, on the integration and harmonization of traditional agriculture and modern scientific and technological change provide the best explanation of developments to date and hold the most promise for Nigeria's future prosperity and autonomy