CAN restates stand against merging of CRK, IRK, Civic Educ

Faults minister’s comment

The Christian Association Nigeria (CAN) has called on the Federal Ministry of Education and the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to publish the full details of the controversial new Curriculum of Education if they have no hidden agenda.

In a statement yesterday in Abuja, CAN President, Rev. (Dr.) Samson Olasupo A. Ayokunle, said the association foresaw the danger ahead if the curriculum that merged Christian Religious Knowledge and Islamic Religious Knowledge with the Civic Education is made to stay.

Ayokunle said: “In this curriculum, Islamic and Christian Religious Studies will no longer be studied in schools as subjects on their own but as themes in a civic education. This undermines the sound moral values that these two subjects had imparted in the past to our children, which had made us to religiously and ethnically co-exist without any tension.

“Is this not a divisive curriculum that can set the nation on fire? Is this fair to millions of Christians in this nation?”The Federal Ministry of Education had debunked the claims that Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) had been removed as a subject of study from the secondary school curriculum and Islamic Religious Studies reintroduced.

Director of Press, Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs. Chinenye Ihuoma, said the ministry had only designed a new subject, which merged Civic Education, IRK, CRK and Social Studies into “Religion and National Values.

She said: “The alternation is not from the minister, this is purely from the National Council on Education. It is just as the council has said that History should be a subject of its own at the basic level in the first nine years.

“Now, a new subject has been introduced, called Religion and National Values. It is a fusion of religion and civics.“Arabic and Islamic Studies are not standing alone. Islamic Religious Studies and Christian Religious Studies as well as National Values will be taught under a new subject.”

Also, the Executive Secretary of NERDC, Prof. Ismail Junaidu, had said: “NERDC hereby states that CRK is still taught in schools as a separate distinct subject with the accompanying Teachers’ Guide.”

But Ayokunle, who said Ihuoma’s words, “to say the least”, confirmed CAN’s fears, further stressed: “We request for a return to the curriculum we were using before this dangerous one, which did not produce insurgents or a wrongly indoctrinated Nigerians. The government must stop the operation of this new curriculum. It did not come out of a forward-looking research but a backward one.

“We caution the Federal Government against the use of propaganda in addressing this sensitive issue because the unity of the country is at stake. We are not crying wolves where none exists.“We are disappointed hearing the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, claiming that CAN was believing a piece of misinformation received from the social media.”