The federal government has reinstated history as a stand-alone subject, thirteen years after it was eliminated from the basic education curriculum.
Adamu Adamu, Minister of Education, said on Thursday, November23, at the flag-off ceremony for the reintroduction of history teaching and training of history teachers at the basic education level in Abuja, that 3,700 history teachers have been chosen for the first round of training for efficient tutoring of the subject.
At the occasion, which was attended by the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, and other significant players in the education sector, Adamu, who was represented by the Minister of State for Education, Goodluck Nanah Opiah, also stated that the lack of knowledge of Nigeria’s history as a result of its removal from the basic education curriculum threatens the nation’s cohesion and could cause it to revert to primordial sentiments.
He said: “History used to be one of the foundational subjects taught in our classroom but for some inexplicable reasons, the stream of teaching and learning was abolished.
“As a result, history was subsequently expunged from the list of subject combinations our students could offer in both external and internal examinations compared to the subjects that were made compulsory at basic and secondary levels in Nigeria.
“This single act no doubt relegated and eroded the knowledge and information that learners could otherwise have been exposed to. It was a monumental mistake and have already started seeing its negative consequences
“The loss created by the absence of this subject has led to a fall in moral values, erosion of civic values, and disconnect from the past. More worrisome was the neglect of the teaching of this subject at basic and post basic levels of education which invariably eroded the knowledge of the evolution of Nigeria as a country.
“The immediate implication of this was that we lost ideas even of our recent past, and we scarcely saw ourselves as one nation and gradually began retreating into our primordial sentiments.”