Emmanuel Osewe
Akubor
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
Abstract
Available evidence has shown that History is recognized all over the
world as a source of enlightenment and development. This is because as a
collective memory of a people, history attempts to bring to the fore the
salient and significant part of events that occurred in the past, which could
be utilized in building a people’s prosperous future. It is therefore not
surprising that every human society, no matter the level of enlightenment and
advancement, has placed optimum priority to the bequeathing of a "useable
past" from generation to generation. This was the most probable reason
behind the establishment of the Historical Society of Nigeria by a group of
Historians some sixty years back and the insistency on the teaching of history
in schools. However, this paper argues that years after the attainment of Independence,
the story seems to be changing (negatively). Data obtained from primary and
secondary sources were deployed to carry out the study with an analytical and
narrative historical method. Findings indicate that the acclaimed role of
history as the vanguard of the Nigerian society has been crippled by some
forces, actors and factors, while the historian have been rendered almost
irrelevant in the society. This, the paper intends to interrogate. The paper
thus concludes that if the much needed is not done by both the individual
historians and the Historical Society of Nigeria, the road ahead may be bumpy
and rough for history.
Keywords:
Nigeria, History, Development, Nation
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