History of Guidiance and Counselling in Nigeria

Whats the historical using of guidance and steering in Nigeria? African nations are in a hurry to educate citizens in order to modernize and enhance their social, frugal and political developing. The concept of guidance and counseling, although relatively in the buff in Africa has been embraced by most(prenominal) developing nations with enormous enthusiasm. This is because counseling is being regarded by most nations as an bringing upal service through which efficient manpower for development can be attained.Counseling practice, however, does run into frequent clashes with African traditions and development goals normal of developing countries. In order to become fully acceptable at this initial stage, the guidance and counseling profession in Africa must birth some compromises and modifications from its original philosophy in the Western sense. Several events direct to the institutionalization of guidance and counselling in Nigerian coach system.Most prominent was the e fforts of a group of Catholic nuns at the St. Theresas College, Oke-Ado, Ibadan. The Catholic nuns developed a race workshop for all the shoals graduating students during the 1959 academic session, especially in the area of undefended selection and job search. A major(ip) outcome of the workshop was the distribution of the much needed career information that enabled 54 out of the 60 graduating students to gain full employment upon their graduation.The workshop on guidance and counselling held at the comprehensive full(prenominal) school, Aiyetoro in 1963 where Mr. R. O. Rees delivered a paper coroneted The role of the guidance counsellor in a comprehensive proud school was excessively instrumental to the emergence of guidance and counselling in Nigeria. So, was the harbor written by Mr. C. I. Berepiki entitled, An approach to guidance in schools. This book inspired the Federal presidency of Nigeria to develop a workshop on guidance and counselling in schools.Through these efforts, the Federal government was able to respect the role guidance and counselling needed to play in the nations boilers suit development that later motivated the Federal Ministry of Education to appoint Mr. C. I. Berepiki to excise full charge of the coordination of school guidance and counselling services in Nigerias school system. Another force that led to the emergence of professional counselling in Nigeria has to do with the events that cropped up after the Nigerian civil war. At the end of the civil war, there arose the dire need to rehabilitate the war victims.The post-war social, political, economic, religious and educational problems, which students, workers and the general public had to face, became enormous such that the less(prenominal) trained career masters/mistresses could not cope. This necessitated a very high demand for guidance counsellors who were expect to provide veritable counselling interventions in the rehabilitation of the war victims. One approach t hen was for the Federal Government of Nigeria to grant scholarship to most candidates who desired to pursue masters degree in guidance and counselling in any Nigerian universities.The introduction of the crude National Policy of Education in Nigeria (commonly referred to as the 6-3-3-4 system of Education) for the on the whole country in 1977, with major revision in 1981, which had among its features, the introduction of a new educational focus for the primary and secondary levels of education also influenced the emergence of guidance and counselling in Nigeria. This policy was a major break away from the existing educational policy that was bequeathed to the nation by the British colonial masters at independence.Under the previous arrangement, secondary school students were expected to slip away five years in the secondary school. In addition, the curriculum tended to emphasize much of liberal type of education. But the new policy extended the number of years in secondary school from five years to six years. It further divided secondary education into two levels junior secondary school (where the student was expected to spend three years) and the senior secondary school level (where the student was expected to spend the remaining three years).