TO halt the growing controversies trailing its removal of Christians Religious Studies and Islamic Religious Knowledge as Independent subjects from the education curriculum, the Federal Government, Thursday, directed that both subjects be reinstalled as independent subjects.
The government asked the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council, NERDC, the country’s education body charged with the development of school curriculum, to immediately reinstall the two subjects where they were before their removal.
Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu,gave the directive at a meeting with State commissioners of education and stakeholders in education sector, in Abuja. Christian Religious Knowledge The minister was represented by the Minister of State for Education, Anthony Anwukah, at the meeting aimed strengthening the partnership within the three tiers of government in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals 4, SDG4.
Speaking at the occasion, Adamu said the restoration of the subjects to their old status was imperative given the controversies their removal had generated in recent times, especially the complaint by the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN. He explained that the collapse of the two subjects was done by former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to reduce the number of subjects offered by pupils and students in schools.
The minister said: “There is this controversy over the merger of CRK and IRK in the school curriculum. There were complaints by parents that children were overloaded with so many subjects and the recommendation then was to merge one or two subjects. Unfortunately, water and oil were merged together and it is not working.
“So, to save ourselves the agony, the two subjects should be separated. We push that to the NERDC,” Adamu, in his address, reiterated the commitment of the Federal Government to revamping the education sector and appealed to state governments as well as relevant stakeholders to support the federal government effort. He also expressed the commitment of the government towards achieving the SDG4 by 2030 in line with the global timeline.
The minister said Nigeria has selected the Goal 4 of the SDGs, which emphasizes inclusive and quality education for all and promotion of lifelong learning, for implementation in view of the importance of education as a fulcrum to national development. He said the federal government was aware that in the journey towards achieving the Education 2030 Agenda, key issues including the phenomenon of out-of-school children, insecurity in and around the schools and infrastructure decay must be addressed. The minister said there was also the need to have credible and reliable data, and how to address the challenge of poor teacher quality as well as teacher gaps, low carrying capacity in tertiary institutions, and poor learning outcomes.
“We recognize that the task of revamping the education sector is challenging, the ministry of education cannot do it alone. Our task is to coordinate national efforts to meet our national goals and objectives. “It is our believe that with good planning, appropriate investment of resources, transparency, due process, effective collaboration and coordination of inputs and activities of government and that of all stakeholders, we will realize our vision of providing quality education to build and sustain adequate human capital for national development,” the minister added.