The minister of education,Dr Maruf Tunji Alausa, has announced the reintroduction of history as a subject in the basic education curriculum.
Alausa, who is a medical doctor specialising in nephrology, stated this in an interview on Channels Television programme.
He noted that history which he described as a “vital part of nation building” had been missing in the Nigerian education system for a long time.
He said the subject will now be taught in schools from 2025.
“We now have people up to 30-year-old totally disconnected from our history. It doesn’t happen in any part of the world,” he said.
He said president Bola Tinubu had mandated that the subject be reintroduced into the curriculum.
“From 2025 our students in primary and secondary schools will have that as part of their studies.”
History was first removed from Nigeria’s basic education curriculum in 2008, supposedly because students were avoiding it with the claim that there were few jobs for history graduates.
It was later merged as part of social studies.
While there have been previous efforts to reintroduce history into the curriculum, these attempts failed.
In 2018, the former minister of education, Mr Adamu Adamu, gave a similar directive, noting that the National Council on Education had approved the reintroduction of history as a standalone subject at the 61st ministerial session in September, 2016.
Adamu, at the time directed the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to carry out the disarticulation of history from social studies curriculum.
He said the new history curriculum was designed to expose students to a body of knowledge that would enable them appreciate history as an instrument of national integration and nation building in the 21st century and beyond.
Four years later in 2022, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) trained 3,700 teachers as part of the move to reintroduce the subject.
With Premium Times report