If there is one subject I would like our political leaders to be abreast of, among others, it will likely be History. I say this because of the importance of history in the life of a nation. Running away from our history or our past is like running away from our shadows. History is so important in the life of an individual, a community, and a nation. It is vital in the life of a business entity or even a long-term project.
For us to understand our present and envision our desired future we must confront our past, we must engage with our past and interrogate it productively. Without having adequate knowledge of our past, we may not be in a good position to appraise our present and determine the kind of future we want. For us to negotiate our existence, we must know our past. Our country is the way it is today because we have had leaders who reportedly forgot our past or did not have sufficient knowledge of our past.
The violation of the constitution and our rights and even our diversity by some of our political leaders is a clear manifestation of the ignorance of our history. The mindless political exclusion of some people and women can be traced to leaders without the knowledge of the political evolution of the country. I can go on and on to buttress the ugly scars of our abandonment of history in the management of the affairs of the country. When Chinua Achebe wrote “I would be quite satisfied if my novels, especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past—with all its imperfections—was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them,” the global literary icon was emphasizing the importance of history and its teaching.
The danger in not teaching our history to the young ones is that our history stands to be distorted and misrepresented by Nigerians. While those without adequate knowledge of our history will recount it the way they know, the outsiders will recount it the way it suits their fancy. They can embellish it and distort it at will. That is why some people are emphasizing our obvious differences and forget that we have so many things that unite us, including the weather and the foods we eat. Even our major rivers, River Niger and River Benue, cut across our different geographies and identities. That can explain our unity in grief when the entire country was over flooded.
When History was expunged from the curriculum of primary and secondary schools in Nigeria and replaced with Social Studies, it was done in haste. It was a terrible mistake. It was a great error. It was probably done without much thoughtful thinking. It was perhaps done by those at the helm of affairs to mask some aspects of our past, which have refused to be buried.
That attempt to abolish History and bury our past has, over time, proved to be our greatest undoing. We have neglected the teaching of Nigerian history at our own peril. We must begin now to recover and reconstruct our history and deepen its study. This is one duty we must not shy away from. It is one task that must be done. Our leaders must take more than a passing interest in the teaching and learning of Nigerian history. The teaching of our history must be compulsory in all levels of our education system. It helps to keep our social and moral values. Now that the government has realized its monumental mistake in removing History from the school curriculum and wants to bring it back to the basic school system, it is all well and good. It had earlier returned the subject to the secondary school level some years ago. This time around, the implementation of the initiative must be thorough and all-embracing. There should be no half measures.
However, the return of History to primary school should not end at the level of official pronouncement alone. It must be backed by the political will to ensure that the subject is well taught at all levels of education, beginning with the primary school level. The government must train enough teachers in the subject. In fact, all tiers of government must jointly fund the project and make it to work. There must be no excuses. We need both National Certificate of Education (NCE) and degree holders for effective teaching of the subject.
We also need teachers with adequate skills and aptitude to teach the subject. They should know relevant methods to teach the subject. We need teachers with great passion for the subject. Government should provide necessary teaching aids for effective teaching and learning of the subject. The teachers must be adequately motivated and remunerated. Any ad-hoc or fire brigade plan to produce teachers of the subject will be counter-productive.
It is good to learn about our past, the era of slavery and slave trade. We must learn the history of colonial rule and the struggle for independence, as well as the various inter-tribal wars. We must know about the history of the Nigerian civil war and its aftermath. We need to know about the history of Nigeria, West Africa, Africa and the world. The teaching and learning of History is just one aspect of our struggle to build a united, strong and peaceful nation. There are other aspects of our existence that require more urgent attention than the return of History to primary schools. The most urgent task now is how to make all Nigerians equal stakeholders in the Nigerian project without any prejudice to tribe, tongue, gender and religion.
The country is badly divided along ethnic, linguistic, gender and religious lines. That is why the polity is filled with ‘it is my turn,’ ‘it is our turn’ and ‘it is their turn’ brand of politics. The country is fractured between ‘we and them’ and ‘we and the other.’ Our politics is predominantly male-oriented. The females can only occupy the position of women leader and nothing more than that. Some of them are satisfied with being appointed the Minister of Women Affairs.
In our politics, the women are still shouting for 35 percent affirmative action when Rwanda has achieved over 50 percent. Paradoxically, Nigerian women are about half of the entire population of the country and yet the men lord it over them in all aspects of our national life. In 2021, Nigeria’s female population was approximately put at 104.25 million while the male population was approximately 107.15 million. The dominance of male over the female in all aspects of our national life is why corruption is rife in the country. That is why we are the poverty capital of the world and the economy is not growing and unemployment is increasing. Insecurity is rising as well as inflation. It is my contention that Nigeria will not witness meaningful development if half of its population is consigned to the margins of the society and perpetually kept outside the arena of critical national decision-making. Nations that have seen economic and scientific development anywhere in the world are those that incorporated and factored women in their developmental agenda. That is why women must be factored in our politics, education, health and every other sector. There is no way the men can do it alone. Then men have even failed the country, especially in its politics. We need a paradigm shift in favour of gender equity and inclusiveness. We need a country that will be fair and just to all genders and treat all people with respect.
Until all Nigerians are treated equal before the laws of the country, we should be very far from realizing the vision of our founding fathers. Until we become known as Nigerians instead of the current being seen from our ethnic prisms, we cannot build the nation of our dream. The knowledge of our past, our history can only be meaningful only when we use it to address and correct the mistakes of the past. We should not continue to live as if all is well with our past and refuse to learn from history. We have been repeating our mistakes because we have refused to learn from history. Let the knowledge of our history, our past, guide us to recreate a new nation where everybody will live in freedom, peace and unity.