The Nigerian government revised the 9- Year Basic Education Curriculum in 2012 in line with global best practices as in Kenya -7 subject, Tanzania- 8 subject, United States of America -6 subject, Malaysia and Indonesia -9 subject offerings.
The curriculum revision process involved identification and grouping of related disciplines such as Christian Religious Studies/ Islamic Studies, Social Studies, Civic Education, and Security Education to create a new composite or cluster of Revised BEC subject called Religion and National Values. Key concepts in the former curricula now form integrating threads for organizing the contents of the new subject into a coherent whole.
The Revised BEC comprises ten (10) subjects namely: 1. English Studies, 2. Mathematics, 3. Basic Science and Technology, 4. Religion and National Values, 5. Cultural and Creative Arts 6. Business Studies
7. Nigerian Languages, 8. Pre-vocational Studies, 9. French, 10. Arabic. As pointed out above, these revisions were made in 2012 when Goodluck Jonathan was the president of Nigeria. It is therefore very surprising that some men of God who are drawn to sensationalism are accusing the Buhari government of being the architects of this revision and accusing same of planning to Islamize Nigeria. How can you accuse a man who became president in 2015 of being responsible for what was designed and implemented in 2012? If only this category of ”men of God” can just stay out of politics and face their calling as preachers, much of the tension that they create with their utterances will be avoided. But even if they must speak, it behooves on them to do their research well before making utterances.
Curiously no single Imam cried out when the federal government headed by a supposed Christian did this review. Neither did CAN or any pastor for that matter say anything about it. All of a sudden three years later everyone seems to have woken up from their slumber. This is really very pathetic. From the foregoing, it looks like these men of God seem to believe that it is what students learn at school that predominantly makes them good Christians or not but I beg to differ. The school syllabus for Religious studies only contains bible stories or historical events in the bible. The subject only made us to cram and recite the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the golden rule. The real Christians principles that we hold dear today were taught in church and in our homes. The school can never be a substitute to the church and the family. So instead of prying into politics and school curricular these men of God should focus attention on using the church and the family unit as the bedrock of building up children because when it is all said and done, a child is a combination of the training he gets both at school and at home. We cannot control what happens at school but we can control what happens in church and at home. The earlier we start doing more of the training at home and in church the better. Those who want to argue can argue. I don talk my own. Let us stop making the church a part of our victim mentality. Nobody can Islamize Nigeria.
The opinions contained in this article are solely those of the author and not of knowislam.com.ng
English 