Undercurrents of Anglo-American Collaboration: Funding, Training and Cold War Influences on the Theatre Studies Curriculum of Selected Nigerian Universities

The Cold War played a crucial but often underestimated role in educational developments across the Third World. In these territories, the drama of decolonisation was often negotiated, scripted, and enacted through a range of initiatives championed by returning students whose activism in politics and academia converged with resistance movements of locally based actors to spur nationalist consciousness, which ultimately led to the triumph of independence across Africa in the 1960s. This paper shall argue that Cold War politics allied with nationalist fervour to engender a deregulation of colonial higher education policies in West Africa, especially in Nigeria. The campaign for access to mass (university) education, the establishment of the University College of Ibadan (UCI) and later its School of Drama, opposition to its British elitist education heritage and the fear of communist infiltration were just some of the things that prompted Anglo-American collaborations in the Nigerian educational system, especially at the tertiary level, via funding, training, and support from institutions such as the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. By examining the curriculum of theatre studies in selected universities in the country, this paper shall advance that not only did sponsorship, funding, and training influence the trajectory of theatre practice and scholarship, but the legacy of colonialism and circulation of experts also played a crucial role in the battle for the future of the practice that manifested not only at Ibadan and Calabar but across theatre departments in most first and second generation institutions in the country

IBIBIO WORLDVIEW ON PARENTING AND CHILDCARE IN EFFIONG JOHNSON'S SON OF THE LAND

Several traditional African cultures share the worldview that children are special gifts from the gods to the land and so attach enormous attention to their up-keep and upbringing. They are not entirely the sole responsibility of the parents only but are effectively conceived of as belonging to the community. This worldview specifically places the child under the guardianship or tutelage of a parent, a step-parent or any adult with familial connections or ties to the child, who must raise him/ her in line with community values and mores, to be a responsible son or daughter of the land. As such, the welfare, well-being as well as training of children from infancy or childhood to adulthood is shaped both by the parent or guardian, (nuclei or extended) family, and the community at large. These institutions -family and community- work hand-in-hand in determining the child's nurturance and socialization experiences. While the community sets the standards in terms of moral and acceptable codes of behaviour and/ or taboos; the family ensures that the child lives up to these societal set patterns, norms and values. The parent or guardian, thus, functions as an interface or compass that directs, links, and molds the child’s behaviour within the family unit to the expected standards of the community. Failure in this regard or deviance does not only earn the parent, guardian or family overt social criticism but the community, as well, shares the opprobrium and also bears the consequences of such deviation. This complex process of interaction and learning is what sociologists have come to define as the "Socialization process". Thus, as drama is basically a social art which imitates or mirrors the society in which it is written or produced either overtly or covertly, this paper shall examine this sociological issue as portrayed in Effiong Johnson's play Son of the Land, using the textual analysis methodology. The paper shall recommend a more inclusive-exclusive, dynamic and multifarious approach to parenting and child care in the context of deeply-held cultural notions and praxis