The future of the Historical Society of Nigeria (HSN), By Toyin Falola
The 70th anniversary of the Historical Society of Nigeria (HSN) calls for reflection on its past achievements and its way forward. Founded in 1955 as a haven of intellectualism and eventually a custodian of Nigerian history, the HSN has posed the right questions about the roles that would render it relevant and refreshed in this new era of globalisation, digital renaissance, and waning interest in the humanities. To continue to play a role in the future, the HSN must understand the nation, develop technologically, and institutionalise professionalism, while remaining original in its aim of decolonising knowledge and structuring the intellectual future.
After the establishment of the HSN during Nigeria’s nationalist spurt, a period during which history was viewed as a political and moral weapon for self-determination, the organisation positioned history as a tool for reclaiming African agency whilst countering Western narratives. It created the foremost platform for research, documentation, and dissemination of indigenous histories, eventually allowing the emergence of the first generation of Nigerian historians. The history of the HSN, however, bears similarities to Nigeria’s development, as both were marked by cycles of growth, decline, and revival.
From the 1970s onward, economic crises, government economic policies, and the government’s neglect of education all negatively affected academic funding and morale. By the early 2000s, the HSN’s impact had waned, its journal publications had become sporadic, and its presence in national life had decreased. A new generation of scholars produced in the 1990s took over and reimagined the organisation, moving it forward. The HSN’s resurgence in the last two decades, especially its role in the reintroduction of history into Nigeria’s school curriculum in 2019, signals renewed vitality.
Today, the HSN remains an intellectually sound institution, and its journal continues to publish scholarship of value, albeit in modest quantities. The initiative is hampered by budgetary constraints that prevent it from sponsoring conferences, supporting junior scholars, and maintaining a sustained web presence. The institution is kept afloat by the good faith of committed historians and membership participation. The organisation’s visibility is another pressing challenge, as its influence has not matched its legacy.
Part of the problem lies in the limited communication between the HSN and the public. This estranges Nigerians outside academia from its activities and the understanding of its importance. In the Digital Era, where historical narratives compete with social media narratives and digital misinformation, this lack of a defined communication system with the public further weakens the HSN’s relevance. Therefore, the significant reform frontiers for the HSN should be: financial sustainability, intellectual renewal, and digital visibility. I have tried to impress upon the last three successive presidents the need to engage in this frontier. Professor Samuel Ovuete Aghalino, current president, has received my ideas with gratitude.
The HSN must embrace adaptation and advocacy to maintain relevance. Globalisation and information technology have reshaped people’s connection to history through platforms like Wikipedia pages and YouTube documentaries. The HSN thus needs to conserve history and work to convert it into comprehensible forms or disseminate knowledge through media that resonate with new generations. By emphasising that understanding history is at the forefront of solving the present crises of governance, ethnicity, and national cohesion, the organisation can assume the burden of historical awareness.
The HSN must also address the declining interest in the humanities by reasserting the civic purpose of history as a discipline. The crisis of history in Nigeria is not due to the public perception of its irrelevance, but to the lack of communication about what it can accomplish. This can also be regarded as the failure to show how history shapes policy, ethics, and citizenship. The Society can connect scholarship to public life by actively creating podcasts, intervening in policy discourse, and conducting school outreach. From various networks, it can reclaim its status as the conscience of the nation and ignite a sense of identity and responsibility grounded in historical awareness among young Nigerians.
The organisation should shape its future through digital innovation and institutional collaboration. Its archives, publications, and conference proceedings should be digitised as ways to preserve Nigeria’s intellectual heritage and democratise access to it. There should be the establishment of a vast online database connected to Nigerian and African universities to aid the visibility and interaction of historical scholarship. Partnerships with institutions such as the Nigerian National Archives, the Nigerian Television Authority, and academic publishers could further transform the HSN into a national digital history hub.
The HSN should partner with universities, museums, cultural agencies, and the diaspora. Alliances like these can help generate research funding, establish exchange programmes, and aid heritage preservation. The engagement of the diaspora through digital conferences and mentorship platforms can help the organisation connect Nigerian historical scholarship with global conversations on African identity and history. The HSN can serve as an advisory body on national history, curriculum revamp, and cultural policy. A partnership between the HSN and institutions such as the Federal Ministry of Education and the National Orientation Agency can help the organisation influence how history is taught and valued.
Rebranding the association is vital. By embracing newer developments, the HSN can be seen as an open, multi-disciplinary platform that engages with journalists, artists, teachers, and policy-makers. Through e-lectures, online exhibitions, and youth essay competitions, the HSN can also close the gap between the public and scholars. The HSN can reorganise itself by granting its regional branches semi-autonomy and by allowing grassroots input and localised investigation. The generosity extended to members in terms of the award of a fellowship must be reviewed. There is now confusion between service and academic awards. Those based on service can be named Fellow of Service to the HSN (FSHN), and the academic one can remain as Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria (FHSN). A person can receive both.
The soul of the HSN remains its mission to decolonise knowledge. The documentation of African history has always been a political vision. It is a struggle to reclaim Africa’s intellectual sovereignty. This mission must continue through the HSN activities while engaging with new frontiers of inquiry. Gender history, environmental history, migration, and digital culture, among others, now define the global humanities. By prioritising these areas, the HSN can ensure its scholarship reflects Nigeria’s lived realities. To rebuild Nigeria’s broken covenant, a kind of historical consciousness that listens to ordinary voices with attention to detail may become a bridge between academic history, social justice, memory work, and nation-building.
By 2050, the HSN should have become a digitally driven, intellectually vibrant, and socially engaged institution that takes the leading role in continental historical scholarship and preservation. There should be a national accessible pool of funding made possible by its members. There must be a mentorship platform to produce the next generation of historians that incorporates transdisciplinary collaboration among History, technology, and the sciences. More importantly, it should be an ethical voice in public life by guiding Nigerians toward a moral reckoning with their past and a clearer vision of their future. The HSN must be more than a society of historians; it must be a movement for historical consciousness.
It must ground itself in the ideas of the nation and Africa, and distance itself from the ideology of “history for history’s sake,” a way of sanitising the evils of capitalism and empire. It must reject the pursuit of irrelevant topics sponsored and promoted from the outside to diminish nationalism and resistance. It must fight all forms of external predatory, exploitative, and dominating relationships, which is like selling one’s soul for groundnuts. Africa is the only continent where outsiders create dominant voices that undermine local voices and flaunt awards to establish intellectual hegemony over the discipline. An award from the HSN should be considered superior to any other award from abroad and must be recognised as such by the universities. The HSN should use its voice to announce the best books published in Nigeria, not those selected by outsiders who harbour racialised judgments. How does a tiny country know the best book for a country of over 200 million?
The future of the HSN can be likened to the future of Nigeria’s moral and intellectual integrity. When a nation detaches from its history, it loses its direction. The future reinvention of the HSN, therefore, is a national necessity. Seventy years on, the HSN stands at a crossroads. Its survival depends on its courage to innovate, collaborate, and speak truth to power. The success of the HSN is tantamount to the preservation of Nigeria’s history and the shaping of its destiny. This goes on to prove that history is not what is left behind but what we build upon.
On behalf of all the active members of the HSN, I thank the leadership for organising the HSN at 70. As some of us phase out in the next few years, we can only pray that the successors will move the Society forward and honor the valuable works of the ancestors. We pray that our children and students will be greater than us, and that their success will not breed arrogance, lunacy, or chaotic activities that promote distrust rather than faith. May passion overcome the current challenges of dispassion. May home-based scholars continue to shape the discipline, and the bent knees created by migration and the diaspora straighten and strengthen, lifting the heavy load from the head. May the KO Dike Award for the best book on Nigeria, administered by the HSN, become what all Nigerian historians will look up to receiving.
Toyin Falola, a professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at The University of Texas at Austin, is the Bobapitan of Ibadanland.