Return history to Nigerian syllabus

History not only reminds people of their background or their being, it is a form of tale written or spoken to give emphasis to events and chronicle the past in order to encourage passion to make the future better.  The fact is that history records all goodness of the past and the mistakes of those who lived in the past. When oral history is listened to, especially Nigerian history, one realises that most of these stories are from the horse’s mouth, deeply rooted and passionately told with familiar mentions from the speakers who were those they either lived the moments with or who lived the moment before them.

When one listens to Nigerian oral stories and its counterpart in books, there is a feeling of closeness to the past days, there are reminisce from how the past has shed light on herself. We wonder why many young ones do not know beyond the teachings of selected topics that reflect only a tip of Nigeria and her citizens. No tales of how or why the country used to be seen differently in governance, justice, commerce, education, health and agriculture hence, earning the popular “Giant of Africa” for herself. That things went wrong and some certain people directly and indirectly ‘suffered ‘ on their mission to make amends, which till now is still being worked upon.

• UK deports ex-UBS trader, Kweku Adoboli, convicted of fraud to Ghana

History is not just a subject of knowledge but a model for wisdom and understanding of how, when and why things are left in particular ways. It is not just a course that should be scrapped while growing up and left for just a few students in the higher institutions.  It is a chronology of what we were and what we have become. We are able to fix a broken mirror when we know the form it was before. We are able to know our roots and what we are meant to do when we know where we come from.  That’s how important history is. It should be in the syllabus from the nursery to the higher institutions. Taking it out could be why some have lost the courage to pursue a better nation than we are in. Nothing reminds them of the purpose of the nation.

Favour Boluwade,

Ibadan