This thesis investigates the practice of high-stakes standardized testing in Nigeria. Examining its colonial histories, its philosophical incongruities with African indigenous education, and its neocolonial foundations, it argues that high-stakes testing in Nigeria facilitates the erosion of a critical African worldview. It demonstrates that through high-stakes testing’s reproduction of social and regional inequalities, the unethicality of its systems and practices as well as its exemplification of Freire’s concept of normative and non liberatory education as the “practice of domination”; high-stakes standardized testing in Nigeria seamlessly fits into the neo-colonial and neoliberal logic of education as a site of psychological colonization and the material exploitation of the people by the ruling elite.

This thesis investigates the practice of high-stakes standardized testing in Nigeria. Examining its colonial histories, its philosophical incongruities with African indigenous education, and its neocolonial foundations, it argues that high-stakes testing in Nigeria facilitates the erosion of a critical African worldview. It demonstrates that through high-stakes testing’s reproduction of social and regional inequalities, the unethicality of its systems and practices as well as its exemplification of Freire’s concept of normative and non liberatory education as the “practice of domination”; high-stakes standardized testing in Nigeria seamlessly fits into the neo-colonial and neoliberal logic of education as a site of psychological colonization and the material exploitation of the people by the ruling elite.