‘We’ve Returned History to Curriculum, Banned Nursery Graduations and School Extortion’ — FG

The Nigerian government, through the Ministry of Education,has announced the return of history to the curriculum. The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, made this knownduring an interview on Arise News, adding that he lacked the explanation to howpeople with their right minds would ban history from being taught in schools. History was officially removed from primary and juniorsecondary schools’ curricula in 2007, with the government citing variousreasons for this decision. Alausa said that the government of President Bola Tinubuthought this was wrong and the President instructed that the subject bereintegrated to the curricula. “Nigerian history is back in the curriculum. We did not banit, but we felt it was wrong, and we moved swiftly to bring Nigerian historyback,” he said. “History wasn’t banned by this government. It was bannedabout 12 to 13 years ago, and you look at it now, our kids are so delinked withthe history of the country. I don’t know who in their right mind bannedhistory, and that’s why this President mandated us to do a pure curriculumreview. “Nigerian history is back as part of our curriculum. Weinstituted it. We started it so Nigerian history is back. We did not ban it,but we felt it was wrong, and we moved swiftly to bring Nigerian history back,”he said. The Minister went on to say that the activities of someschools whereby they extort from parents through the sale of textbooks andgraduation ceremonies for nursery school have also been banned. “And now let me talk about the nursery school graduation. Itmight be fun for you, but sheer extortion of parents, it’s not acceptable. “Why would you do graduation for one or two children? It’sjust sheer extortion. We want to encourage these kids, but let’s give themproper milestones. “When you finish primary school, do your graduation, whenyou finish GSS do your graduation, SSS, do your graduation. We give themsomething that leads to milestones, something that is more cogent, moretangible, not the way everything is being turned into extorting the parent. “And part of all this extortion of the parents that we’vestopped is that when I was growing up, I used my sister’s textbook. Our parentswill tell us, please keep that book very well, your younger brother will useit. So it’s a way to save costs. “Now they manipulated the entire process, you put theworkbook as part of the textbook, so the student will now write on those booksand they become useless. And next year, you tell the parents to buy anotherbook. “And also what publishers were doing was that they would noteven change anything in the book. There won’t be any major content change. Itmight just be pagination or just a print of the new cover. “They say, ‘Come and buy a new textbook’. We will not allowNigerian parents to be extorted and that’s why we moved to stop that. And nowwe said the workbook must be completely separated from the core textbookitself.”

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