History is set to return as a subject in Nigeria’s primary and secondary schools. Barring any unforeseen hitches, the reintroduction, which was mooted in 2016, will be actualised sometime in 2025. Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, conveyed President Bola Tinubu’s approval for the implementation of the plan while featuring in a Channels television program on January 1, 2025. “What has been missing in the past is Nigerian history. We now have people of 30 years disconnected from our history. It doesn’t happen in any part of the world,” Alausa stressed. The minister’s specificity on Nigerian history helpfully dispels contending notions of African, West African, or general world history. Although the minister outlined “disconnection from our history” as a need factor for the policy, he did not go into details, especially with regard to stating the objectives or goal to be achieved with the exercise. And for that crucial component of the program, we have to go to his predecessor, Adamu Adamu, who started the journey in 2016.
Adamu, who oversaw the curriculum development stages of the policy, had offered some definition of the problem. “You have to know who you are before you can be anything in this world. 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.” At the commencement of training of history teachers in 2022, The Guardian of December 10, 2022, quoted the minister as further saying, “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.” The consistency in the execution of this policy is commendable. It suggests there is merit in the vision and equally gives hope on the issue of continuity in government projects. However, the presumed gains of history study in our schools invite closer interrogation against the lessons from our nation-state efforts and experiences elsewhere. Are the values of history necessarily the same as those of nation-building? Does consciousness of history equate to conviction? What constitutes nation-building? How does history impact citizen behaviour?
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There are about two main positive dimensions of the initiative. The first borders on the decolonisation of our sense of civilisation. Conservative and radical African thought tend to accept that Western education left its toll on the African psyche. In spite of its many salutary contributions to development in Africa, Western education unleashed a feeling of inferiority complex in the average African. Western stereotypes of the Black man’s religious, political, and cultural barbarism as it affects Nigerians need to be addressed by projecting the authentic way we lived. Our native languages were suppressed, and with them a good dose of oral history and worldview. We envisage that the scheme of Nigerian history will correct the misplaced lionisation of an imperialist soldier such as Boden Powell by highlighting the exploits of local heroes. And ditto for the egregious ascription to Mungo Park of the discovery of the River Niger. As the sage, Chinualumogu Achebe, put it: “Our past was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans, acting on God’s behalf, sought to deliver us.”
There is no doubting the government’s focus on a three-course meal of Nigerian history, identity, and citizenship rolled into one. We think the federal government’s essence is one that can be adapted from Bob Marley’s _Exodus_ lyrics. “We know where we’re going. We know where we’re from. We’re leaving Babylon. We’re going to our father’s land.” It speaks of a history that traces our roots as coexisting neighbours even before the advent of colonial boundaries. It speaks about the evolution of a common destiny from colonial statehood to the gains of independence. In this era, Nigerian history for schools would most probably dwell on the similarity of subnational cultures, emphasising how components of the federation have related and made gains over the years. It seems the case that the content would be driven by the philosophy of The Guardian’s oft-quoted exchange; a cross between Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s “Let’s forget our differences” and Sir Ahmadu Bello’s riposte, “Let’s understand our differences.”
A historically enlightened mind will most likely take pride in the achievements of his society. To such an extent, history could aid the integration efforts of a state. Intimate knowledge of the Nigeria civil war, for instance, could mediate interethnic conflicts. There can be no doubt that the sobriety thrown up by the civil war experience has staved off dangers again and again. The lessons of the war have made dialogue a preferred conflict resolution formula for the older generations. It’s reasonable to expect that a deeper absorption of the impact of the war would sensitise younger generations not to take national unity for granted. But the benefits of historical awareness are not elastic. Their efficacy is not automatic but dependent to a large extent on other intervening factors. The interplay of these variables, not the declaration behind a history curriculum, will ultimately determine the result of the project.
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