RELEVANCE OF AFRICAN TRADITIONAL EDUCATION IN THE DIGITAL ERA: PERSPECTIVES FROM NIGERIA

Abstract

This paper analyzes the concept of education in traditional Nigerian society through its indigenous system of education. It attempts to offer a critical examination of the system of education while x-raying its relevance or otherwise on Nigerian society in a world of global interconnectivity. The age of global interconnectivity, which is synonymous with modernization, is regarded as the Digital Era. This Digital Era has reduced the world to a global village with its penetrative and technologically dependent-driven approach. This leaves the typical Nigerian at a crossroads leading to what is better described as an identity crisis. The paper thus seeks to analyze the pedagogical methods and core contents of Africa’s traditional education and chart a course for its relevance to the Nigerian system of education in the digital era. It concludes with the submission that Nigerians stand to benefit more by allowing for a synergy of the core content of the two eras of education to form the basis for the education curriculum for the nation.