Gold Coast nationalist reaction to the controversy over higher education in Anglophone West Africa and its impact on decision making in the colonial office, 1945-47, The

Journal of Negro Education, The, Spring 1997 by Charles Peter Emudong

Despite these warnings, Creech-Jones stubbornly continued to defend his proposals. However, by March 1947, after having assumed the position of Secretary of State for Colonies, he dropped the recommendations of his own report and approved those of the Majority Report, to the jubilation of the Gold Coast nationalists. CONCLUSION

The controversy discussed in this article can contribute to our understanding of the development of higher education in West Africa in several respects. For example, the Minority Report's concept of territorial colleges provided the framework for the Nigerian "Nigercol" institutions of the 1950s and, to some extent, the present-day polytechnical institutions in Nigeria. The replacement of Achimota College by the University of Legon, as also foreseen by the Minority Report, set a precedent for the later conversion of other Nigerian educational institutions with a vocational function into universities. Ahmadu Bello University is an example of this. Moreover, the Minority Report's warning about remedial teaching also bears consideration by educational policymakers in present-day Nigeria where, as a result of the shortcomings of secondary education, tertiary institutions are using much of their resources for remedial work.

This article has attempted to examine and analyze the origin, content, and development of the controversy over higher education in Anglophone West Africa, and to show how its final resolution by the CO was greatly influenced by nationalist pressure. Although this controversy was triggered by the publication of the two conflicting reports in July 1945, its manifestations are traceable as far back as the 1920s, when the Anglophone West African nationalist agitation for higher education as well as constitutional and economic reform began to assume an increasingly pan-Africanist tone. Unfortunately, until the late 1930s, the CO, and particularly its local administrators, ardently opposed the idea of establishing universities of any type in the colonies, fearing that such institutions would facilitate the emergence of informed and articulate opponents of the entire colonial status quo. Since then, several factors, most importantly British economic decline and the likelihood of a strong emergence of colonial nationalist activity after World War II, led the CO to begin planning for higher education in the colonies that would facilitate the success of its new, comprehensive strategy. The objective of this strategy was to enable the transfer of power to colonial peoples without fundamentally sacrificing British economic interests.

Given the importance of managing rather than simply suppressing nationalist politics, it was hardly surprising that the CO bowed to the pressure from the Gold Coast and discarded the Minority Report. The eventual decision to extend higher education to Anglophone West Africa and other British African colonies was conceived within a wider context of the evolving British policy of planned decolonization (or neocolonialism). This explains, to a great extent, the continued intellectual, political, economic, and social dependence of Anglophone West Africans on their former colonial masters. However, this article refutes the generalization that until late in the colonial period West African nationalist pressures were too weak to play any role in determining the process of decision making in the CO and in shaping West African institutions.