CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Before Nigeria became independent on October 1, I960, the nation went through a long period of colonial administration.
This, what is today known as Nigeria was actually a large vast of land consisting of various indigenous political systems. In the northern part of the country, there were the Hausa – Fulam Caliphate, the Kanem-Bornu Empire, the Nupe Empire system and a host of others. In the south were the Benin Kingdom, the Yoruba and / or Oyo Empire, the Ibo acephalous society among others.
Before the series of amalgamation that followed the advent of colonialism, there was already in the northern part a hitherto strong political organization of the whole north sequel to the 1804 Islamic Jihad of Uthman Dan Fodio. It was thus well-organized northern Nigeria that the colonialist imposed their indirect rule system.
The casual relationship between the colonial mind-set and Darwinism is skewed to Plato's philosophy of education and statecraft. For instance, just as Plato calls for a class based education for a class structured society where individuals must aspire to remain in the proscribed class, the educational policy of the colonial state was similarly structured and intended.
Rather, it was against any form of education, Muslim and Christian alike, not seared towards the realization of the colonial state's agenda. Hence, the colonial state neither destroyed nor developed the Islamic education system, though it appropriated the cultural and socio-political ethos of the Islamic faith it met in Nigeria to serve its interest. Similarly, the colonial state neither destroyed the Christian missions in Nigeria nor spread them from constrictions even though the state, to sustain itself, relied heavily on the services of the products of the Christian educational system. In place of both the Islamic and the Christian educational systems, the colonial state initiated a secularized system of education. It was secularized mainly because religion was made an appendage - something merely recognized 'some what tardily' - rather than the nub of colonial state's educational policy2.
By the time Lord Lugard left Nigeria in 1918, the secularized educational policy of the colonial state and its antecedents,  the  Indirect  Rule  policy  and  the   1914 amalgamation of Nigeria, were already firmly established. So too was the administrative division of the country into three unequal groups of provinces. This was to the advantage of the favoured.
Islamic North in comparison with its Western and Eastern counterparts in the Christian South.
By the mid-1930s and the 1940s the colonial system become firmly consolidated. Given the largest minimum in contact between the different parts of the country, especially between the North and the South. It was not surprising that the colonial system spawned in the religious and socio-political life of the country animosity, suspicion and all sorts of divisive practices. For instance in the North, the Northern indigenous Christian were perceived as posing political threat to the Fulani- Islamic hegemony.
From the point of view of national politics, the colon nil administration in the North, unlike that in the South, had congealed into what came to be known as the 'Northern Systems,, that is the Anglo- Hausa-Fulani Islamic Hegemony.