The
Federal Ministry of Education has announced that in order to reduce the
workload of primary and junior secondary pupils, they will be cutting
down subjects from 20 to a maximum of ten subjects under the nine-year
basic educational curriculum in order to align with International
standards.
To
achieve this, the ministry of Education will be partnering with the
Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC). However,
subjects like Christian Religious Studies (CRS) and Islamic Religious
Studies (IRS), which are separately taught, will now be merged under a
compulsory subject known as Religion and National Values (RNV). Other
subjects brought under the RNV include Civic Education, Social Studies,
and Security Education.
What
irks us and other well-meaning and worried Nigerians is the problem of
portraying the persons, significance and teachings of Jesus Christ, the
founder of the Christian faith and Prophet Mohammed, the Prophet of
Islam, to our children in a way that will not cause religious upheavals
in the country. A major source of the conflicts between adherents of the
two religions around the world for nearly two thousand years is that
they do not have a unified viewpoint on the places of these two.
Secondly, the Bible and the Qur’an are not on the same page on major
issues about man in this world and hereafter.
One of the most objectionable aspects of the RNV is that it forces
Christian children to memorise and recite the Qur’an while Muslim
children are made to study Biblical texts even in predominantly Muslim
areas where exposure to Christianity is strictly forbidden in Nigeria.
It also encourages children to disobey their parents if they forbid them
to follow Allah.
Two
prominent religious leaders, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad
Abubakar, and the Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos,
Alfred Adewale Martins, have condemned this move, calling on the Federal
Government to maintain the separate teachings of these faiths to avoid
unnecessary confusion and conflicts. We remind the Federal Government
under President Muhammadu Buhari that Nigerians have inalienable right
to religious freedom.
Furthermore,
the Child’s rights Act of 2003 preserves the right of the child not to
be exposed to any religion contrary to that of his parents or guardians.
The RNV is a vain and reckless attempt to “harmonise” Christianity and
Islam, which is as impossible as mixing water with oil. It is
unconstitutional, unpatriotic and unwarranted; and we vehemently oppose
it.
We
condemn the surreptitious moves to impose the preferred faith of some
adherents on the rest, and call on those pushing this unholy and
explosive agenda to think of the grave consequences they could pose to
the unity and stability of Nigeria.
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