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Writing Skills Gap among Nigerian History Undergraduates: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions for Academic Writing

Academic writing remains one of the weakest skills among Nigerian History undergraduates, even though it is central to research, publication, and scholarly growth. This study draws on interviews with fourteen current History undergraduates to understand how this gap manifests and why it persists. Students tend to feel fairly confident writing essays and seminar papers, but that confidence drops sharply when they face more advanced tasks such as abstracts, journal articles, and conference papers. They also struggle to find credible primary sources, organize their arguments clearly, and move from descriptive historical narration to critical analysis. The problem is not simply individual weakness. It is also institutional: academic writing is rarely taught as a course in its own right, mentorship is inconsistent, and students get too few chances to write for real scholarly audiences. The study argues that these gaps reflect deeper curriculum limitations in Nigerian History education. It concludes with practical, curriculum-based suggestions, including dedicated academic writing courses, structured mentoring, and more exposure to real writing opportunities such as calls for papers and student journals.

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Witnesses from the Frontline: Nigerian Soldiers in World War II, 1939–1945.

At sixteen, Isaac Fadoyebo joined the British colonial military, seeking employment, travel and adventure. He would eventually find himself thousands of miles from Nigeria, fighting in Burma against the Japanese. When he was badly wounded and separated from his unit, his survival depended on the help of local villagers. His story offers a different way to understand Nigeria's place in the Second World War. Image attribution: Nigerian soldiers with their Mallam, Burma, c. 1944. National Army Museum, London, accession no. 1996-08-382-35. Listed as out of copyright by the museum. "Catalogue record" (https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1996-08-382-35).

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THE MIDWIFE OF TWO KINGDOMS A chapter from the River San 1939 to 1945

Before the war learned her name the river already knew it. She crossed at dawn and crossed again at dusk and the water never asked which side she was walking toward. Image Credit: The Midwife Taking Leave of the Girl from Andros (1801), by Nicolai Abildgaard. Image courtesy of Statens Museum for Kunst, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain (CC0 1.0).

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WHERE ARE THE HISTORY STUDENTS INTERNING?

Where Are The History Students Interning? A September Series Let's talk about something we don't talk about enough. If you studied Medicine, you did clinicals. If you studied Law, you intern in law firms. If you studied Engineering, you had your SIWES. But if you studied History? You most likely walked straight from your final year project into "what next." No internship structure. No clear career pipeline. No one showing you where a historian actually fits into the working world. And that's the tricky part, because History is not a narrow field like Medicine or Law where the path is already boxed in for you. A historian can work in a nonprofit, a government institution, an archive, a media house, as a research assistant, in heritage and culture, in policy, in education. The options are wide open, and for many young historians, that openness feels less like freedom and more like confusion. Where exactly do I start? Who do I even reach out to? That's the gap this series is here to close. Over four episodes, we sat down with history students and graduates who found their way into internships through very different routes, and each of them came with something worth sharing.