•Set up policy monitoring team now –Bishop Alawode

From Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan

Related News

National President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Rev. Samson Ayokunle, has insisted that the new national curriculum on education, released by National Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) is time bomb that is not only against the Christians, but also, Muslims.
Rev. Ayokunle argued that the curriculum is more against Christians and warned that all anti-Christian clauses in the curriculum must be expunged by the Federal Government because it is capable of setting the country on fire.
Ayokunle, who is also the national president of Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC), spoke with Daily Sun, on the first day of a three-day conference, organised by Fuel the Fire Ministers’ Network (Covenant Alliance) in Ibadan.
President of the ministry, Bishop Olumakinde Samuel Alawode, urged CAN to have an arm that would monitor policies of government at all levels to ensure that anti-Christian clauses are not allowed in the policies, instead of advocating their removal after the policies have been formulated.
Regardless, the CAN president stated that the booklet which NERDC brought out for year one to nine – primary school up to junior secondary school as national curriculum, is not only against Christians, it is also against Muslims because they have reduced the teaching of those two subjects – Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) and Islamic Religious Knowledge  (IRK), and merged them into one.
“Is it now that we are having more violence, when we need to teach people more about the love of God, the love for one another and the need for peaceful co-existence, which the religions teach that you will now be de-emphasising the moral teachings of the religions and merge them into one. That will not take us anywhere. Then, all the clauses in that curriculum, which is antagonistic to the tenets of another major religion should never appear in national curriculum. It will not do us any good. So, this is what we are saying and we are telling the government, that curriculum must be repealed, it must be scrapped, it is of no use, it is irrelevant, it is an ill-wind that blows no one any good.”
Addressing Christian ministers drawn from all over the country, and two other countries, Ayokunle said: “We have started suspecting that there are some policies in Nigeria that we must not allow, otherwise, we would live no future of faith for our children, we would not be able to hand over the legacy of knowing God through Christ that our parents handed over to us. One of them is the one that I am presently fighting with the rest of the team on the obnoxious national curriculum on education; that curriculum is going to be scrapped in the mighty name of Jesus, especially the one that has to do with year one to nine, which is from primary school to junior secondary school.
“We have some clauses there that will set the nation on fire. It should not appear on national curriculum, where one religion will be teaching children that ‘Jesus Christ did not die on the cross, he did not rise from the dead’ and so on. The teachings are very provocative that will make school pupils to be boxing one another. If you want to teach that  in your privacy, go and teach it. But never in the national curriculum.
“Also, we are resisting with everything within us the attempt to reduce the status of religious teachings, the attempt to merge Christianity, Islamic studies, civil education together and call it Religious and National Values, is totally rejected.