In Defense of New School Curriculum

(Published by NIGERIAN TIDE on 21 August, 2017)

By Carl Umegboro

With the National Council on Education’s communique after its 62^nd meeting on July 28 which deflated the rumours on exclusion of Christian Religious Studies originally known as CRK in the Basic Education Curriculum, noxious fears over religious crisis is supposedly laid to rest. The buzz as impishly created sumptuously aired that CRK which teaches Christian faith was expunged from basic education curriculum by the present administration.

Ditto on History which elites viewed as misadventures on account of endless aggressions and hate speeches from virtually all the ethnic groups in the country in recent times. Each group with its styled rabble-rousing, incendiaries and threats. From southeast; cessation for Biafra. From Arewa; quit notice to the Igbos. From Niger-Delta; resource control, and from Southwest; demand for Igbo’s absolute loyalty or the lagoon option. Incidentally, almost all the arrowheads are the post-civil war populations. Few witnessed the war and its effects, thus fictional commandos. History as widely believed gives a clue of the past including the good and the bad, but lacking. Sadly, the neophytes never knew that people guzzled raw cassava, raw meat and anything closely for survival as a result of war. They owlishly misconstrue wars as Nollywood-Bollywood orchestrated fights; probably their only horror encounters.

Some leaders from Christendom, on account of the perceived quagmire raised up combatively calling on the federal government to reverse to status quo. The allegation implied that only Islamic Religious Studies remains as a compulsory religious subject, hence, Christian children strategically programmed to become Muslims against their beliefs. As a result, the atmosphere ubiquitously became tense with squabbles, murmurings, criticisms and elucidations.

At its acme, Hon Minister of State for Education, Prof. Anthony Gozie Anwukah believably, to douse the overheated tension outsmarted the schemers asserting that federal government has directed that the two religious subjects be separated immediately. In a way, positive as it calmed the polity. On the other hand, grossly flawed as it was contradictory. The truth is that both subjects have been distinct subjects on their own from origin.

Historically, the 9-year Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) originated from Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration in 2008. Its prominent characteristics include providing remedy to the UBE Act, 2004 for universal access and continuous basic education in Nigeria; attain the lofty values of social and economic development and reconstruction enshrined in the MDGs, NEEDS, SDGs and other global and domestic initiatives.

However, owing to public outcry on the plethora of subjects, they were prudently rearranged by the previous administration in 2012 with the then Minister of Education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i and Minister of State for Education, Barr. Nyesom Wike, now Rivers state governor, alongside Professor Godswill Obioma as the then Executive Secretary, Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC). The rearrangement led to grouping of the five subjects; Christian Religious Studies, Islamic Religious Studies, Social Studies, Civic Education and Security Education under the Religion and National Values (RNV) and then, the successive minister, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau with the Minister of State, Professor (Mrs.) Viola Adaku Onwuliri maintained it as indicated in the National Policy on Education, 6^th edition (2014) for basic education (primary 1 to junior secondary 3) at page 10 – 13.

Palpably, President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration implemented the UBE with a slight review through the present Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu in 2016, which merely disarticulated History from Social Studies to stand separately as two subjects, and nothing more. The development resulting from consultations was to engage children deeply in Social Studies and History rather than the shallow knowledge that merely recites public officeholders and cities as thoroughly-crafted panacea over the hurly-burlies in the contemporary age.

Nonetheless, despite government’s directive to remove the two religious subjects away from its existing Religious and National Values group by 2018, what is still paramount is that the learners will perform well on them irrespective of the group they will be affixed to. Critically, Christian Religious Studies is sacrosanct for Christian pupils, and to Muslims; Islamic Religious Studies as they have been. Deductively, nobody ever conceived merger or exclusion.

Similarly, French language alleged to be elective with the ‘Islamic Arabic studies’; alien to the curriculum, is clearly a compulsory subject from Primary 4 as provided in Section 2 (23) 7 at page 13 of the National Policy on Education. Furthermore, Arabic language remains optional since 2008, and exclusively for those willing to have knowledge of the language.  

Overwhelmingly, NCE reiterated its position in line with the 9-year BEC policy which emphatically provides, “no child should be coerced or compelled to learn or taught any religious studies curriculum in school but one out of the two that restrictively relates to the belief system professed by the child and his/her parents”.  Thus, no child is however, to be offered a religious studies other than that of the parents in public schools. Of course, if in private schools, a completely different ball game with respect to ‘volenti non fit injuria’ (to a willing person, no harm is done). Ditto on missionary schools, as logically, they cannot teach the doctrines of other religion.

Overall, who are the gainers and losers? Of course, the children and the society and no losers at all. The children will face more subjects compressed under any grouping. Under the arrangement, to pass, for instance all RNV subjects, a pupil will have to perform well in four subjects under it. On the economy, the scheme opened-up gargantuan opportunities for deployment of new graduate-teachers in schools. None wondered where the quantum of the new teachers would be posted to knowing that no new public schools is built anywhere in the country. Federal government perspicaciously utilized the BEC to create jobs and at the same time impacting positively on the children. Thus, the brouhaha or hullaballoo is uncalled for. Let’s eschew politics with religion.

Umegboro is a public affairs analyst