Abstract

The pivotal role which education plays in helping humanity to come to terms with existential imperatives cannot be over emphasized. It is the management of the flux concomitant to existential imperatives that can ensure social order, understood in normative perspective. In this paper, I address the development and conception of education within the African continent, particularly Nigeria and argue that the foundation of education must be predicted on humane values which the humanities, other than the natural sciences in spite of their utilitarian values, provide. Furthermore, I argue that given the humanistic basis of education predicated on certain human and communal values, existential predicaments can be addressed thereby paving way for social order and by extension human happiness which is the goal of development in any part of the world. The paper concludes that government is the greatest teacher and the actions and inactions of government, as the sustainer of right values, in Africa matter more in ensuring development-oriented education that can adequately combat our existential challenges as well as ensure the entrenchment of social order for sustainable development.