Education, a process by which the community seeks to open its life to all the individuals within it, and to pass on to them its culture, including the standards by which it would have them live, came to Nigeria through three main avenues-Islamic religion, British colonial administration and Christian missionary agencies. The first, Islamic religion or Koranic education came rather inadvertently, following the penetration of Islam to the Kanen Bornu Empire, and the Hausa states in the 11 th and 14 th centuries respectively. The second and the third avenues were by deliberate administrative and missionary designs aimed at achieving defined objectives. This paper seeks to interrogate the place of the education that was introduce by these various means into what was to become Nigeria in the early 20th century with the aim of establishing to what extent it has aided the development of Nigeria and advanced nation-building process. It further examines what institutions were established by the modern educational system in the country, and what impacts these institutions have had on the developmental trajectory of the country. A historical methodology of analysis that is thematic, chronological and descriptive is adopted, while the instrumentalist paradigm of social analysis is employed.