Federal Government reintroduces History as subject in school curricular

Federal Government reintroduces History as subject in school curricular

- The Nigerian government removed History as a subject from curricular of schools in Nigeria

- Recently, Nigerians began calling for History to be reintroduced in schools

- Professor Josiah Ajiboye, who announced the reintroduction, also complained about shortage of teachers in Nigeria

Years after it first adjusted curricular of schools, the National Council on Education has returned History to be taught in schools across the country.

There had been clamour for the subject to be returned especially because of the current state of the country having to do with various agitations and the fact that most Nigerians lack knowledge of past happenings in the country.

Professor Josiah Ajiboye, who heads the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria, said in Abuja that the decision to bring back History was made at a recent meeting.

He said 1.8 million teachers had been registered while professional examination would be conducted for about 15,000 others later in 2017.

Punch reports that Ajiboye complained about the lack of adequate teachers for the population of school children in the country.

Ajiboye said the qualifying examination would help to restore sanity to the teaching profession and eliminate quacks.

“The NCE held a meeting last week in Kano state where it also agreed that History should be re-introduced into the curriculum.

“At the TRCN, we have also taken measures to eliminate quacks among our teachers. The council successfully distributed Teachers Bio-data forms to the 774 Local Government Areas of the country.

“The Bio-data will help to know the numbers of subject teachers and where they are located across the country and this will address the disproportionate distribution of teachers,” the report quoted Ajiboye as saying.

“Within a year, we registered an additional 130,645 teachers to bring total of registered teachers to 1.8million. We also inducted 29,381 teachers at the point of their graduation,” Ajiboye added.

NAIJ.com earlier reported that the president of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Prof Christopher Ogbogbo, has said that the development crisis in the country is because of lack of history. Ogbogbo made this known when he led a delegation on a courtesy visit to Senator Ali Wakili representing Bauchi South senatorial district in Abuja.

He decried that the absence of history in school curriculum in the country from primary schools to junior secondary schools.

According to him, this is responsible for the death of the knowledge of history