Tinubu mandates return of history to Nigerian curriculum

The Minister of Education Tunji Alausa says President Bola Tinubu has mandated the return of Nigerian History as a subject in basic education. He made the statement while speaking on an interview monitored by Radio Now’s Newsdesk.

“And one important thing that I’ve been missing in the past was Nigerian history. We have now people who are 30 years old, totally disconnected from our history. It doesn’t happen in any other part of the world. President Mbola Metinuba has mandated that we put that Nigerian history back in the curriculum. It’s back. From 2025, our people, our students in primary school, GSS, and secondary school would have that as part of the course of study in schools.”

He also raised concerns on the quality of graduates Nigerian universities churn out annually.

“Now the university, you’re very correct, a lot of our universities are churning out unemployable graduates deliberately in courses that are not relevant today to our country. I’ll be meeting with the vice-chancellors of all our further universities sometime on the 12th of January. We’ll talk more about this.We need to refocus the kind of education we give our our citizens, people, our young people that go to university. So once we start doing that, if you look at it, there’s something that NUC has done. We have 70% standardized curriculum at the NUC level and the universities are 10% able to add to that.”

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While speaking, the Minister emphasised the need to refocus the kind of education our citizens get.

“But then it’s not as if the curriculum itself is bad. It’s because today, anyone that goes to school in Nigeria today in medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, we are one of the best in the world. These professions, these professionals are well sought after anywhere in the world. Go to the US, go to UK, Nigerian doctors, Nigerian trained doctors, physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, engineers are doing so well. It’s not those core areas. We’re talking about areas that we don’t need.And that’s why it appears that we’re creating, we’re churning out a lot of graduates that are not employable.”