Nigeria displayed the sharpest educational divide described in the extract. In the early 1960s, only about five per cent of school-age children attended classes in substantial areas of the former Northern Region, compared with almost full attendance in certain districts of the three southern regions. The later division of Nigeria into states made these contrasts more visible and generated resentment within states where educationally advantaged groups were thought likely to monopolise government employment and attract greater federal support.

Yaba Higher College offered professional training but not degrees, a status regarded as inferior to that of institutions elsewhere. The extract identifies this institutional inequality as a particularly powerful stimulus to nationalist feeling among Nigerian intellectuals during the 1930s and 1940s. By 1972 Nigeria had six universities, with seven more planned, although secondary and technical education still lagged behind the expansion of primary schooling because of insufficient funds and teachers.

Nigerian students and graduates became increasingly visible in public life. Under military regimes, university students often assumed an opposition role left vacant by politicians and frequently clashed with authorities, sometimes violently. Nigerian writers also helped adapt English into a distinct West African literary form, with Amos Tutuola, Gabriel Okara, and Chinua Achebe named among the writers associated with this development.

Nigeria’s relations with Ghana deteriorated during the Nigerian civil war. Ghanaian newspapers sympathised with the secessionists, while Ghanaian authorities showed impatience with Nigeria’s federal leadership. After Ghana returned to civilian rule in 1969, its government offered to mediate in the war, an initiative regarded in Lagos as impertinent; the later expulsion of thousands of Nigerians long resident in Ghana further damaged relations.