An Educationist, Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje has picked hole in the
nation’s education curriculum for lacking the teaching of history from
basic to tertiary levels.
Alhaji Baraje, who is the founder and financier of Baraje Centre for
Islamic and Arabic Studies Gerewu, Ilorin, Kwara State, blamed lack of
teaching history on some of the societal challenges confronting
Nigeria today.
Speaking last Thursday at a Book launch and Meritorious Award of
Excellence presentation of the Centre for Ilorin Studies, University
of Ilorin where he received an award, he said children of nowadays had
jettisoned their norms, cultures, values and tradition because of lack
of history teaching, thereby imbibing alien cultures they are exposed
to through the media particularly social media.
Baraje said, “Some of us who were teachers are seriously against the
fact that the curriculum that we are now running in our Secondary
Schools right from the primary school to the Tertiary Institutions has
a lot of holes and one of the major holes is the abolition of teaching
of history because there is no today without yesterday and there can
never be tomorrow without today. So if people don’t know, if children
don’t know where they are coming from definitely they will behave
anyhow, act anyhow and jettison the value they would be taught to them
in history”
“They won’t know history, they won’t appreciate it so they will pick
other people’s value that are not appreciable to us and that is the
problem.”
Baraje, a former acting National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP), said most of them in the education sector knew that it
would spell a doom when teaching of history was removed from education
curriculum, pointing out that if people could learn from history, the
rate of killings, smoking of hard drugs and other societal ills would
stop.
In his remarks, The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Prof.
Sulyman Abdulkareem, has said the institution was committed to
enhancing academic endeavours and understanding the unique history of
Ilorin emirate.
He stated that the University believes in sustaining the mutual
benefit between the host community and the academics.
He added that the Centre for Ilorin Studies was as a result of
international best practices of strengthening the relationship with
immediate communities.
The Vice –Chancellor added that it is an opportunity to immortalize
the works of great scholars associated with the birth of any other
lineage with Ilorin.
In her address, Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen, said
that the title of the book is apt, as security implies freedom from
danger, encompassing measures put in place to safeguard lives and
property from harm or loss.
Tallen, who was represented by the Director of Women Affairs, Mrs
Eletu Aduke, added that violence negates activities, discourages
investors, leads to capital flight and reduce investment and create
high unemployment.
