The Federal Government (FG) has begun the first phase of a teacher training program to reintroduce history into the basic education curriculum.
The news was made public on Thursday during an inauguration ceremony in Abuja.
During the 2009/2010 school year, history was removed from the basic school curriculum, which sparked outrage.
However, the federal government announced in March 2018 that the subject would be reintroduced.
Speaking at the event on Thursday, Adamu Adamu, the minister of education, who was represented by Goodluck Opiah, the minister of state for education, expressed concern about the lack of history education for more than ten years.
He did, however, mention that 3,700 history teachers had been chosen for the first round of training to reintroduce the subject.
“History used to be one of the foundational subjects taught in our classrooms, but for some inexplicable reasons, the steam of teaching and learning was abolished,” he said.
“As a result, history was subsequently expunged from the list of subject combinations our students could offer in both external and internal examinations, compared to the subjects that were made compulsory at basic and secondary levels in Nigeria.
“This single act, no doubt, relegated and eroded the knowledge and information that learners could otherwise have been exposed to. It was a monumental mistake and we have already started seeing its negative consequences.
“The loss created by the absence of this subject has led to a fall in moral values, erosion of civic values, and disconnect from the past.
“More worrisome was the neglect of the teaching of this subject at basic and post-basic levels of education, which invariably eroded the knowledge of the evolution of Nigeria as a country.”
According to the minister, the reintroduction will focus on teacher training to improve capacity development.
Teacher selection was done on a pro rata basis, according to Hamid Boboyi, executive secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), with 100 teachers chosen from each state and federal capital territory (FCT).
