By Kingsley OBIEJESI.

Last week, the Christian Association for Nigeria (CAN) alleged that out of all the parastatals in the ministry of education, only four are headed by Christians.

Samson Ayokunle, the CAN President, made the allegation when criticising some of the topics added to the new syllabus of Christian Religious Studies (CRS).

“To say the least, that is a misleading statement from a Minister who is not only trying to Islamise the ministry with all the appointments he has made but denying the reality of discrimination policy under his watch,” Ayokunle had said.

“A situation where 13 of their heads are Muslims while the remaining four are Christians is an ill-wind that would blow no one any good.”

17 PARASTATALS — IS THAT TRUE?

Ayokunle’s statement implied that there are 17 parastatals/agencies in the ministry of education. This isn’t true.

According to the website of the ministry of education (www.education.gov.ng), there are 21 parastatals, but these include the West African Examination Council (WAEC), which is a sub-regional body and is not under the direct control of the ministry. The chairman is  Evelyn S. Kandakai, a Liberian.

So if one excludes WAEC, then there are 20 parastatals on the list.

However, the list of newly appointed heads of education parastatals, released in August 2016, featured the Nomadic Education Commission and the National Institute for Nigerian Languages, both of which were not listed as parastatals on the website of the education ministry. These two take the number of education ministry parastatals to 22.

ANSWER: No, there are at least 22 parastatals in the education ministry.

13 MUSLIMS, 4 CHRISTIANS — IS THIS TRUE?

Here is a table containing the parastatals in the ministry and the religion of their heads

ANSWER: From the the table, it is clear that the ratio of Muslims to Christians in the leadership of education parastatals is not 13: 4. Instead, it is 13:9. Therefore, CAN President Ayokunle was WRONG when he said “a situation where 13 of their heads are Muslims while the remaining four are Christians is an ill-wind that would blow no one any good”.

By Kingsley OBIEJESI.

Discussions about the “removal” of Christian Religious Studies (CRS) from Nigeria’s secondary school curriculum have been ongoing since June 14 when a delegation of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) paid a courtesy call on Acting President Yemi Osinbajo at the State House.

During the visit, Samson Ayokunle, the CAN president, pointed out that whereas the new curriculum stipulates that CRS – also referred to as Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) – will no longer exist as a subject on its own, Islamic/Arabic Studies and French have been introduced.

Ayokunle told Osinbajo that the curriculum had earlier been dropped by the ministry of education after CAN raised objections. He however expressed surprise that the same curriculum had resurfaced.

“This curriculum is the brain-child of Nigerian Educational Research Council, an agency of the Federal Ministry of Education. To us in CAN, its introduction is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good for so many reasons,” he had said.

THE GENESIS

The curriculum, which has now assumed national importance all of a sudden, actually took effect from the beginning of 2015 as announced by Ismail Junaidu, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), a parastatal of the federal ministry of education.

This means that it was drafted and approved by the Goodluck Jonathan administration.

The education ministry explained that a new curriculum was introduced to prune down the number of subjects offered by primary and secondary school students in accordance with international best practices.

Among other things, a new subject called Religion and National Values (RNV) was introduced in the new curriculum, comprising Christian Religious Studies (CRS) and Islamic Religious Studies (IRS), Civic Education, Social Studies, and Security Education.

All these used to be separate subjects on their own, except Security Education, which was newly introduced as a result of the challenges of the Boko Haram insurgency.

SO, WHAT IS THE MATTER?

Harmless and innovative as the idea may sound, religious leaders from both the Christian and Muslim divides think it is a bad idea to merge CRS and IRS.

They feel both should remain separate entities as they have always been and let children be taught the religion of their parents instead of forcing a Muslim child, for instance, to take CRS lessons or vice versa.

According to Nicholas Okoh, Primate of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, the ministry of education has no right to merge both subjects into one. “We recognize our differences, but we call for unity … Let Muslims be Muslims and Christians be Christians,” the clergy man was quoted as saying in May.

This was strongly supported by Ralph Madura, a priest and the secretary-general of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), who said that that the so-called merger “would create confusion”.

“Every right-thinking person knows that religion is a very sensitive issue in this country,” he added.

Lakin Akintola of the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), the new curriculum reduces the role of religion in national development.

According to him, by merging the study of the two biggest religions in the country, FG is simply telling the kids that religion does not matter.

“If the Federal Government educates Nigerians without a special place for religion,” he warns, “it will only succeed in producing clever devils.”

FACT

According to the new curriculum as published on the website of NERDC, the subjects to be offered by students include: English, Mathematics, Nigerian Languages, Basic Science and Technology (BST), Religion and National Values (RNV), Cultural and Creative Arts, CCA, and Arabic.

Under RNV it is stated as follows:

1. Listed components will serve as themes in the Religion and National Values Curriculum
2. Contents are planned for all children to take Social Studies, Civic Education and Security Education themes
3. Separate classes should be run for CRS theme and IS theme
4. Consumer Education, Disaster Risk Reduction Education and Peace and Conflict Resolution curricula are infused into the Civic Education, Social Studies and Security Education Themes.
5. Create enabling environment for the subject in all schools

Also in the curriculum, Arabic was marked as “optional”.

Also, Junaidu had explained, on many occasions, the so-called merging of CRS and IRS.

He blamed the unnecessary fuss over the issue on the “ignorant and greedy publishers” of the text books for the subjects.

“In all, we have not changed the contents; the contents are intact,” he said.

“I wouldn’t like to use the word merged, because when you use the word, merging, it would look like you are taking them (both CRS and IRS) as one,

“As far as the listing is concerned, they are standing as distinct courses, but merged under one subject listing.

“In each of these, we made provisions for periods to be set aside for teaching CRS, we have periods set aside for IRS, and we have periods set aside for teaching Social Studies.

“When we developed the curriculum, we also developed the teachers’ guide; and each of these teachers’ guide is separate.”

BOTTOM LINE

Religion is no doubt a very delicate issue in Nigeria, much more delicate than even tribal sentiments, hence caution should be applied when dealing with such issues.

Criticism of the new curriculum by Christian and Muslim leaders suggests that adequate consultation was not carried out during the formulation of the policy.

Nigerians remain divided on whether the new curriculum should be reviewed again to reflect some important subjects – history for instance – that were surreptitiously expunged years ago.

Some say the teaching of core religion should be left for the churches and the mosques but many feel a better approach ought to have been adopted by the government before announcing the new curriculum.

And as the brouhaha continues, the words of Wole Soyinka, the noble laureate, came readily to mind, that “If we do not tame religion in Nigeria, religion will kill us.”

CONCLUSION

Has Buhari removed Christian Religious Studies (CRS) from the curriculum, as currently being bandied about on social media?

The answer is NO. What is in place is a course comprising both Christian and Islamic themes with the teaching of national values.

Roughly one month ago, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said one of the reasons the revised curriculum of primary and secondary schools cannot stand is that it contains satanic topics, such as ‘Is Jesus the son of God?’

While condemning the new curriculum, developed by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) and already in effect since January 2015, Samson Ayokunle, President of CAN, had said: “If the new curriculum is treating the two religious subjects separately as being claimed, why do we have a satanic topic in the Civic Education like ‘IS JESUS THE SON OF GOD?’”

He described the merging of CRS and IRS as themes under one umbrella topic of ‘Religious and National Values (RNV) as an “obnoxious, divisive and ungodly time bomb”.

This was just one of numerous statements by leaders of the two leading religious groups on the alleged “merging” of Christian Religious Studies (CRS) and Islamic Religious Studies (IRS) in the curriculum.

However, the ICIR has obtained the RNV syllabus from one of the secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and after carefully studying it, it could not find any trace of such topic.

It was also discovered that students are not compelled to offer both CRS and IRS, as claimed by both Christian and Islamic leaders.

RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL VALUES

RNV is made up of the following: CRS/IRS, Social Studies, Civic Education and Security Education.

According to the curriculum, the aims and objectives of the subject are, among others, to: “inculcate the spiritual, moral, social, political and intellectual role of Muslims.

“Assess the students’ acquisition of knowledge in practical application of Islamic teachings in daily life.

“Inculcate in the students satisfactory intellectual capacity to benefit constructively from post-basic education in Christian Religious Studies

“Foster progressive and continuous development of Christ-like character.

And “develop Nigerian Youths into responsible citizens”.

The subject consists of Papers 1 and 2; Paper 1 being CRS or IRS.

An instruction on the paper read: “Candidates who registered for CRS should answer questions on CRS only while candidates who registered for IRS should answer questions on IRS only”.

Both CRS and IRS have a total of 60 marks and they are divided thus:

CRS: Old Testament 30, New Testament 30 = 60

IRS: Qur’an 15; Hadith 15, Fiqh 10, Tarikh 10, Tawheed 5, Tadhib 5 = 60

Paper 2 is made up of Social Studies, Civic Education and Security Education. It also has a total of 60 marks divided thus: Social Studies – 30, Civic Education -20 and Security Education – 10 = 60.

CRS TOPICS

Topics under CRS are distributed thus:

Each topic has different contents but the question: “Is Jesus the Son of God?” did not feature anywhere in the curriculum.

IRS TOPICS

Topics under IRS are distributed thus:

There are also contents under each topic.

RECOMMENDED TEXT BOOKS

Again, contrary to claims by some people that CRS and IRS are combined in the same RNV textbook, the syllabus, as seen by the ICIR clearly recommended separate textbooks by different publishers for CRS .

There was no column for recommended text books for IRS.

ANYTHING WRONG WITH THIS SYLLABUS

Going by the issues that gave rise to the development of a new curriculum in the first place, such as reducing the number of subjects offered by students, and also given the enormous research that went into the development of the new curriculum, one may agree that the introduction of RNV is a good development.

Leaders of the two major religions in the country have all called for the unbundling of the CRS and IRS under one parent subject called RNV. They want the subjects returned as distinct and separate courses, just the way they had been over the years.

On July 11, the House of Representatives gave them their wish, passing a resolution directing the Ministry of Education to revert to status quo and remove both CRS and IRS from the RNV.

“The new curriculum is in conflict with certain provisions of the Nigerian constitution,” it said.

“Section 10 of the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria, 1999 makes Nigeria a secular state and therefore religion should be separated from national values.”