There were three fundamentally distinct education systems in Nigeria in 1990: the indigenous system, Quranic schools, and formal European-style education institutions. In the rural areas where the majority lived, children learned the skills of farming and other work, as well as the duties of adulthood, from participation in the community. This process was often supplemented by age-based schools in which groups of young boys were instructed in community responsibilities by mature men. Apprentice systems were widespread throughout all occupations; the trainee provided service to the teacher over a time of years and eventually struck out on his own. Truck driving, building trades, and all indigenous crafts and services from leather work to medicine were passed down in families and acquired through apprenticeship training as well. In 1990 this indigenous system included more than 50 % of the school-age population and operated almost entirely in the private sector; there was virtually no regulation by the government unless training included the need for a license. By the 1970s, education experts were asking how the system could be integrated into the more formal schooling of the young, but the question remained unresolved by 1990.

For generations before the reached of Europeans, Nigerians taught their children informally about their culture, work, survival skills, and social activities. Some societies gave more formal instruction about society and culture as part of young peoples’ rites of passage into adulthood. In Islamic communities, students studied the Qur’an (Koran) and read other religious texts written in Arabic. Many of the more able students pursued higher Islamic studies and became teachers, clerics, or legal scholars. By 1919 northern Nigeria had about 25,000 Qur’anic schools. A large number of Islamic schools are still in operation.