History and National Development

Abstract

Volumes of works have been written on the subject of the relevance of history to national development in Nigeria. To „.non historians.. history teaches no particular skill “since the primary focus of history is the past... Does history still serve any purpose especially in the 21st century? What are those values embedded in historical studies? In real terms, is history relevant? More importantly, in a country like Nigeria in search of development and technological breakthrough, what can a discipline, which concerns itself primarily with the digging of facts in the past offer? We shall attempt to answer these questions in this paper. In doing this, we shall focus on the unbreakable nexus between history and national development; bring out the relevance of this link especially at this age of globalization; analyze what a country like Nigeria stands to gain from a discipline such as history; lastly we shall suggest how Nigerians could be imbued with an enduring and proper sense of history.