The purpose of this paper is to put on the scale of history the recommendations of what is commonly, though unofficially, referred to as the Ashby Commission and to weigh the importance of the Commission in the light of educational developments in Nigeria since September 1960 when the Commission submitted its report to the Nigerian Government. The end of 1971 made proposals in the report more than ten years old; and it is perhaps time for the historian to hazard an evaluation.

An initial problem is how to ascertain the specific role which the Commission's recommendations have played or failed to play in the developments which have taken place in Nigeria's educational scene within the last decade. Obviously it cannot be argued that the Commission's recommendations were the only determinants for the features of Nigeria's educational growth since the past ten years even when such features bear resemblances to the recommendations. The very fact that the report of the Commission was accepted and acted upon by the Nigerian Government is evidence enough that ideas contained in it were shared in Nigeria at that time by a larger number of people than the nine members on the Commission. That a considerable number of the proposals in the report have been adopted as part of the basis for educational planning in the country, in my thinking, owes more to this popularity than to any assumption of extraordinary wisdom on the part of the Ashby Commissioners, whose recommendations have in certain respects been anticipated by actual developments.