FG reintroduces History in school curriculum

· To make religious knowledge compulsory

THE Federal Government has called for disarticulation of Social Studies and reintroduction of History as a subject in the current Basic Education curriculum.

This was as the government expressed concerns about moral decadence especially among the youth in the country and ordered that the study of Christian Religious Knowledge and Islamic Religious Knowledge be made compulsory in schools.

Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, who disclosed this while declaring open, the ministerial session of the 61st National Council on Education (NCE), in Abuja, on Thursdaya, said there was the urgent need to give the Nigerian children character.

Adamu said the Federal Government owed a responsibility to present and future generations to remove all inhibitions against making Nigeria children acquire morals and ethics as taught in religious traditions.

He condemned the removal of History as a subject from the current Basic Education curriculum, saying it was a mistake that would not have been allowed to occur in the first place.

He said: “In the recent past, as leaders in education, we have committed what clearly is a mistake; and it is part of greatness that when a wrong is committed, effort is made to right it.

“We have sought to de-emphasise the study of religion and study of history, respectively, the way and how of life. How can we know who we are when we don’t know who we are not?

“How can we know what to make our society when we don’t know how our society is made up and how can we hope in our future when we don’t have pride in our past?”

He noted that President Muhammadu Buhari had directed that Nigeria’s education system must prepare its children for responsibilities of citizenship and national development as well as for global leadership.

He expressed the readiness of the administration to overhaul the education sector in Nigeria and tasked stakeholders at NCE, which is the highest policy making body in education sector, to brace up for the challenge of making Nigeria a great country.

The minister said the recent decision of the Federal Government to proscribe post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (Post-UTME) and cancellation of second interview test by the National Examination Council (NECO) with effect from 2016/2017 academic session and 2017/2018 academic year respectively was to reduce the burden on parents, candidates and guardians.