Federal government on Thursday announced the formal reintroduction of history as a subject in the country’s basic education curriculum after it was abolished 13 years ago.
Former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua-led government in 2009 removed history from Nigeria’s basic education curriculum supposedly because students were avoiding it with the claim that there were few jobs for history graduates, and that there was dearth of history teachers.
But the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that on Thursday, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, performed the inauguration ceremony of the reintroduction of teaching of history and training of history teachers at basic education level in Abuja.
The education minister who was represented at the ceremony by the Minister of State for Education, Goodluck Opiah, expressed worry with the way the national cohesion was being threatened with the country retreating into primordial sentiments as a result of lack of knowledge of the evolution of Nigeria following the removal of history from the basic education curriculum.
Adamu noted that a total of 3,700 history teachers had been shortlisted for the first round of training for enhanced teaching of the subject.