The Christian Association Nigeria on Thursday called on the Federal Government to publish the full details of the controversial new education curriculum.
The implementation of the curriculum, the organisation advised, should be suspended until all the grey areas were addressed.
According to CAN, while there is nothing wrong with the old curriculum on Christian Religious Studies and Islamic Religious Studies, what people have been yearning for is a return to Civic Education and History for obvious reasons as distinct subjects.
“We request a return to the curriculum we were using before this dangerous one which did not produce insurgents or wrongly indoctrinated Nigerians. It was the pupils that came from a school system where morning devotion was removed that are behind the insurgency and kidnappings happening now.
“The government must stop the operation of this new curriculum. It did not come out of a forward-looking research but a backward one. A stitch in time saves nine.”
The President of CAN, Dr. Samson Ayokunle, made the demands in a statement issued by his Special Assistant (Media and Communications), Adebayo Oladeji, in reaction to a statement issued by the Federal Ministry of Education and the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council over the alleged removal of CRS from the curriculum.
Our correspondent had reported that CAN raised objections about the curriculum during its meeting with the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo .
Ayokunle had told Osinbajo of a case in Kwara State where a pupil was punished for refusing to register for the IRS.
“A Christian pupil in a secondary school in Kwara State had his body lacerated with cane by the Arabic teacher because the pupil refused to attend an IRS lecture when the French teacher was not available and CRS, Hebrew or Greek were not part of the options at all,” he had said.
But the Director of Press, Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs. Chinenye Ihuoma, said the ministry had only designed a new subject which merged Civic Education, IRS, CRS and Social Studies into “Religion and National Values”.
“A new subject has been introduced, called Religion and National Values. It is a fusion of religion and civics…I have not seen the details but in a case where you have subject combinations in the same period, everyone will attend lectures that correspond with their own religion.
“Arabic and Islamic Studies are not standing alone. Islamic Religious Study and Christian Religious Study as well as national values will be taught under a new subject,” she had said.
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