A Political Economy of Knowledge in Nigerian Adult Education: Power, Curriculum, and Social Reproduction

This study conducts a political economy of knowledge analysis of Nigerian adult education curriculum, examining how power relations, elite interests, and institutional structures shape what knowledge is legitimated, transmitted, and withheld in adult education settings. Drawing on Bourdieu's field theory, Apple's critical curriculum theory, and Foucault's analysis of knowledge-power relations, this study argues that adult education curriculum in Nigeria is not a neutral technical product but a political artefact that reflects and reproduces social hierarchies. The study uses a critical ethnographic methodology, combining 24 months of participant observation in adult education settings in Abuja, Lagos, and Kano with critical discourse analysis of curriculum documents, facilitator training materials, and assessment frameworks from 1970 to 2023. Elite interviews with 35 curriculum developers, politicians, and education administrators are conducted. Findings reveal systematic patterns of knowledge exclusion in Nigerian adult education curriculum, including the marginalisation of political rights knowledge, suppression of labour rights content, selective representation of civic knowledge that reinforces state authority, and absence of critical financial literacy that would challenge exploitative informal credit practices. The curriculum functions as an instrument of social reproduction that equips adult learners with sufficient skills to participate in the economy while limiting the critical consciousness that would challenge structural inequalities. The study contributes an original political economy of adult education knowledge model for Nigeria and recommends a national curriculum audit process led by civil society organisations with explicit social justice mandates.

Keywords: political economy, curriculum knowledge, adult education, social reproduction, Nigeria.