There is an oft-repeated, but rarely examined, claim that the study of history as a subject has been removed from the school curriculum in Nigeria. It is said that the teaching of history has been eradicated from the school curriculum, and that is why Nigerians do not study history. But I don’t agree.

Contrary to what many believe, the teaching of history has not been interrupted. No policy, no legislation has ever banned the study of history in our schools or prohibited Nigerians from reading. The claim that the teaching of history in Nigerian schools has been eradicated is therefore false. It is important to emphasize this point in order to challenge and correct a narrative driven by an assertion that, for some, borders on intellectual laziness.

Nevertheless, we must ask ourselves: what really happened to the study of history in Nigerian schools, and what can we do about it? It takes some knowledge of history to know what happened to history in our schools.

At some point in Nigeria, artistic disciplines in general began to be marginalized and undervalued, supposedly in an attempt to promote science and technology. Nigeria, policy makers believed, needed to catch up with the “industrial world”.

If I may make an autobiographical note. Like when I was in high school, between 1974 and 1979, we were made to believe that weak students studied arts subjects, while strong and intelligent students studied science subjects. It was a source of pride for a student to be described as a “Phy-Chem-Bi” student, that is to say a student of Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
Some parents discouraged their children from studying arts subjects because they wanted their children to become doctors or engineers. They preferred their children to study science subjects.

It was a time when the chant was: “technology transfer,” a time when science was emphasized to the point of devaluing the arts. The intention was not to eradicate history but to advance science and technology. This logic appears to have influenced President Shehu Shagari, in his televised address to the nation on the evening of October 1, 1979, to announce his intention to establish universities of technology in Akure, Owerri, Minna and Yola.

A university, by vocation, is a universe of knowledge from which no province of knowledge must be excluded. But Nigeria began to create universities in which science and technology enjoyed near-exclusive epistemic privilege while humanities studies were marginalized.

Given this pro-scientific policy, not only the study of history, but also the study of languages, literature, religion and philosophy have been casualties. The consequences are now before our eyes: the average Nigerian tertiary graduate suffers from memory loss, is notoriously poor in the written and verbal use of English and Nigerian languages, makes simple logical errors in discussions and is unethical in various ways. Remember that ethics is not taught in the science faculty. It is taught in the philosophy department located in the faculty of arts.

Now where you have a human being with memory loss because they haven’t read history, unable to communicate because they haven’t studied the use of language, and unable to be logical in his thinking because he didn’t study philosophy, that’s it. trained someone close to a monster. It is no wonder that our common life is characterized by endless and seemingly insoluble conflicts, debates riddled with errors that often end in violence. But the problem is not unique to Nigeria.

In 1994, the day after the funeral of President Richard Nixon, I asked the young American students I taught at Boston College if they knew why President Nixon had been impeached. No one in the class knew. I thought I could help by offering a clue. So I asked if anyone knew about the Watergate scandal. Only one student knew that Watergate was a building located in Washington, DC.

He didn’t know what the building was for, or what the scandal was. If, as in 1994, the young American students I taught knew nothing about the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon’s impeachment and resignation as President of the United States, then the lack of interest in the study of history is not unique to Nigeria. This is a fall from a dominant technocratic mentality that has supplanted the sapiential mentality. We are more interested, not in facts, but in figures and gadgets, rather than in wisdom. Today, this interest is further increased by interest in STEM courses.

It is extremely difficult to maintain a democratic culture without studying history. Here in Nigeria, the largest voting bloc is made up of young Nigerians who know very little about Nigerian history, or who have been presented with ethnocentric versions of Nigerian history, and who know little or nothing about the backgrounds of the candidates in campaign for public office. It is certain that the only beneficiaries of this loss of history are the members of the political class of this country. They are able to hold public office not only because they are powerfully successful in compromising the electoral process by buying votes, capturing ballot boxes, and falsifying results, but also because their backgrounds are largely unknown to the public. largest electoral segment.

The loss of history institutionalizes and perpetuates tyranny. A tyrant rises to power because voters ignore his history. Upon taking office, he suffers from memory loss induced by the loss of history. Because if he knew history, he would have known that tyrants never end well in history. He who does not want to be a tyrant must study history. He would then learn that tyrants end up in the dustbin of history.

But a warning is in order. As desirable as the study of history is, anyone who wishes to study history must be wary of revisionist history, that is, the blatant or subtle distortion of facts, stories told not in service of the truth, but in the service of ideology and propaganda.

Many Nigerians, young and old, have not learned from their past mistakes because we do not study history. However, Nigerians should not blame the government for not knowing their history. No one is stopping anyone from buying and reading history books. In fact, the cell phone, when connected to the Web, constitutes the largest library in the world. We must spend more time reading the history of this library than watching movies on our cell phones.

Anyone who wants to learn history is not deprived of documents. In a country where people tend to believe everything pastors and politicians say, anyone who does not want to be deceived must read. But as we all know, if you want to hide a secret from Nigerians, put it in writing.
Father Akinwale is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, Lagos State.