FIFTY YEARS OF PSYCHOLOGY IN NIGERIA: ARE WE STILL TEACHING SCIENCE OR FOLKTALES?

Abstract

This paper critically examined the current status of the teaching of psychology in Nigeria fifty years after the discipline was first taught in a Nigerian University. With around thirty departments across the nation’s universities, there is no indication that an indigenous approach to the teaching of the discipline has evolved. Secondly, there is a gradual decline in the level of adherence to universal values underpinning the teaching of psychology as a science in the country. The teaching of psychology and as a consequence, the practice of the discipline is drifting in the direction of irrelevance mostly as result of weak institutional support for the discipline by university authorities and the absence of a law backing the Nigerian Psychological Association (NPA) as the regulatory body of psychology in the country. As a result, the NPA has been incapable of dealing with a myriad of problems of teaching psychology as a science as well as unwholesome practices within the profession. In order that the discipline becomes relevant to growing national demands for psychologically- oriented solutions to problems and contribute to the development of globally acceptable explanations of human behavior, Nigerian psychologists need to actively support on-going efforts of the NPA to urgently put in place legal-sanctioned mechanisms for regulating the teaching and practice of psychology in the country.