The author worked in Nigeria for eleven years, for some of the time as a teacher, and for part of the time as a school inspector. In this article the author reflects upon the progress of the Nigerian Federal Inspectorate of Education, its inception, including the reasons for its formation, its early history and that of other educational inspectorates in Nigeria and details of the Inspectorates day to day work. The author sees the start of the Federal Inspectorate in a wider social and political context as an example, in the field of education, of the way in which the Federal Nigerian Government at the end of a bloody and vicious civil war steadily increased its power relative to that of the state governments. The creation of the Federal Inspectorate of Education served the cause of Nigerian National Unity and did much to retain high educational standards at a time of the rapid expansion of the educational system.