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Challenging the status quo: Alan Pifer and higher education reform in Colonial Nigeria

The historiography of higher education in Nigeria has not fully accounted for Alan Pifer’s crucial contributions in reforming the elitist British higher education tradition in colonial Nigeria. Through qualitative analysis of mostly primary sources acquired from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Columbia University, this article argues that Pifer was one of the influential architects of higher education reform in Nigeria in the years immediately following the Second World War – and under the auspices of the Carnegie Corporation foundation for the advancement of education. Pifer’s involvement in Nigeria emerged from his experience on Africa as an administrator of the Fulbright Scholar Program. He was driven by a deep conviction that Nigeria’s educational expansion was central in remaking the country’s postcolonial society and the belief that engaging Carnegie’s resources in pursuing Nigeria’s educational reform would help America win the Cold War in Nigeria, and thus ensure a strong, united pro-American country.