The Nigerian Government has restored History as a subject in the school curriculum 13 years after the subject was removed from the basic and secondary school curriculum.
The federal government removed history studies from primary and secondary schools’ curriculums from the 2009/2010 academic session.
In 2019, the government, however, ordered the reintroduction of the subject.
Goodluck Nanah Opiah, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Education, announced this development in Abuja on Thursday at an event.
He said the commencement would commence the process of training History teachers that would teach the subject.
Many Nigerians condemned the removal of History from the school curriculum at the time.
Samuel Ortom, the Governor of Benue State, had in 2021 described the action as evil.
He said Benue State will legislate a solution for the teaching of History, even if it’s for internal consumption of knowledge about how the people of Benue came to occupy what is today called Benue.
“Removing history from our curriculum is an evil agenda. So, in our schools here, even if we do it and it is not accepted for examinations to be conducted at the level of SSCE, let’s do Mock Exams. This will be within us. Because we must know our history, we must know how we came here,” the governor said.
However, the government said on Thursday that 3,700 History teachers have also been shortlisted for the first round of training for enhanced teaching of the subject.
Adamu Adamu, the Minister of Education who spoke through the Minister of State for Education at the flag-off ceremony of the reintroduction of the teaching of History and training of History teachers at the basic education level, lamented that the national cohesion was being threatened as the country was retreating into primordial sentiments because of lack of knowledge of the evolution of Nigeria following the removal of History from the basic education curriculum.
The Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar and other key stakeholders in the education sector attended the event.
“History used to be one of the foundational subjects taught in our classroom, but for some inexplicable reasons, the steam of teaching and leaming was abolished,” the Minister said.
“As a result, history was expunged from the list of subject combinations our students could offer in external and internal examinations compared to the subjects 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 retreated into our primordial sentiments.”
Adamu added that the training and retraining of teachers to enhance their capacity development that would lead to the mastery of the subject would be a focus of this re-introduction.
He said teachers would be provided with the requisite skills needed to teach the subject, the technique, methodology, which will eventually give the subject a didactic outlook that will arouse the children’s interest to listen with rapt attention and remove the initial barriers that may have inhibited learning.
On capacity building for teachers having been disconnected from History teaching for several years, the Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr Hamid Bobboyi, said a total of 3,700 History teachers had been selected from the 36 states of the federation and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) for training.
He added that the selection was made on a pro-rata basis, 100 teachers each from a state and FCT, stressing that this would equip them with the necessary skills to teach the subject, especially with modifying the subject content.
Bobboyi said following the directive by the Minister of Education for History to be restored as a subject in schools, the Commission and Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), went to work, saying he was glad that the task had been accomplished with the eventual flag-off of the teaching of History in schools on Thursday.
Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, in his goodwill message, said Nigeria, as a country, is still evolving and striving to achieve nationhood, adding that the rich history of the country’s diverse constituents could be explored and exploited to serve as an effective tool for nation building.
He appealed to traditional rulers as custodians of the nation’s rich culture, traditions and values, and indeed, all Nigerians to support the bold step taken by the government and given effect by the Universal Basic Education Commission to return the teaching of history as a subject at the basic education level.
“We owe it a duty to encourage research for the documentation of the history of our people and should be forthcoming in granting access to historical records in our custody,” he said.
