Why not compulsory religious studies?

Nigerians are at their hypocritical heights whenever their two “major” religions are on the front or back burners in national discourse.  When it suits our sacred sensibilities we are a nation of people so passionate about our religious identities; at other times we are so indulgent in worldly ways that we can go unholy lengths […]

Nigerians are at their hypocritical heights whenever their two “major” religions are on the front or back burners in national discourse.  When it suits our sacred sensibilities we are a nation of people so passionate about our religious identities; at other times we are so indulgent in worldly ways that we can go unholy lengths to maintain the “multi-religious secularity” of Nigeria and woe betide all those Muslim and Christian extremists who dare to suggest the Islamicization or Christianization of Nigeria with their theocratic terrorism.  Recently, learned elites of both faiths that have been bickering over religious education and the introduction of a new subject called RNV in the schools’ curriculum.
Religious and National Values (RNV) is nothing but the next level in the surreptitious relegation of both Islam and Christianity in the schools’ curriculum and ultimately in the hearts and minds of our future generations. Simply put, neither of the time honoured icons of religious studies in Nigerian schools-Islamic Religious Knowledge(IRK) and Christian Religious Knowledge(CRK)- will survive with its distinct identity on the schools’ subjects table by the time RNV takes firm root in our basic curriculum. In the same way that history as the anchor self-identity and consciousness has been successfully stripped of its pride of place among major subjects taught in our schools and swept into the anonymous irrelevance of being just a part of “social studies”, so also has the study of our sacred Islam and Christianity, in defense of which we kill, burn and maim, been unceremoniously robbed of their revered rank among school subjects and dumped in a lump of mundane misnomers such as Social Studies, Security Education and Civic Education.
By implication, even the mention and reference to Islam and Christianity as distinct areas of study in our schools has been obliterated and replaced with an abbreviated jargon under a curious collection of irreligious subjects. If the monumental scale of moral corruption perverting our youth and future leaders is of the slightest concern to our much touted Islamic and Christian sensitivities, we don’t even need the RNV to instigate a nation-wide agitation for, not just reinstatement of the revered ranking of Islamic Religious Knowledge and Christian Religious Knowledge (in full spelling) but also immediately making them compulsory subjects. In fact, there is no more potent antidote for such moral decadence than for youth to be forced to study their Qurans and Bibles as a condition for acquiring educational qualification.   
Instead this salient issue has been buried in diversionary diatribe that will only add riotous annihilation of Muslims and Christians to the tacit elimination of the study of Islam and Christianity in schools. Typical of geo-political allegiances, a northern Islamic twist is spun to drive the propaganda. The new curriculum in which the RNV virus is embedded has been implemented since 2014 under the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency but is now being mischievously attributed to the Adamu Adamu led Education Ministry with the additional misinformation that, according to a Vanguard editorial whipping up the sentiments, “ One of the most objectionable aspects of the RNV is that it forces Christian children to memorize and recite the Qur’an while Muslim children are made to study Biblical texts even in predominantly Muslim areas.” Nowhere in the approved new curriculum is such an insane scheme mentioned, rather IRK and CRK are to be taught separately. Even the no less controversial Child Rights Act is dragged in to the affair by the Vanguard: “ Furthermore, the Child’s rights Act of 2003 preserves the right of the child not to be exposed to any religion contrary to that of his parents or guardians.” But it does not preserve the right of the child not to be exposed to the decadence and debauchery of pornographic hip hop videos on national TV!
We are already being primed to explode in waves of ethno-religious massacres and mayhem in the make-believe conviction that the danger in RNV is the bogie of Islamicization rather than the  surreptitious disconnection of our youth and future leaders from their heritage of Islamic and Christian religious upbringing and knowledge, rooted in the fear and worship of One God. It should not be that difficult to decipher the double jeopardy of self-deception and cunning foreign manipulation of our school curriculum to turn our youth and future leaders into uncultured and Godless zombies. Doing the opposite of what the mindset-manipulating RNV schools’ curriculum sets out to do is the answer: make IRK and CRK compulsory!
It is not just history and religious studies that have been targeted in this wicked web of mental re-colonization. The NERDC has been turned into a conduit for counterfeit curricula for the systematic frustration of the functional and home-tuned educational system we desperately need that can facilitate meaningful development of a skilled, self-reliant and patriotic manpower base. It has been railroaded into a slavish dependence on so-called “international standards and best practices” that can only bring the worst to us by pre-loading our basic education curriculum with a propensity of “socialized’ subjects.
According to NERDC’s DG, Professor Ismail Junaid, the future of the nation’s curriculum will deviate even further away from conventional academic and professional studies as every government institution wants to have its mandate as a school subject. The FRSC wants road safety studies, the NDLEA wants drug abuse studies, the NEMA wants disaster management studies and financial literacy is the for the CBN. If God is to help us out of this anti-development and un-Godly approach to the education of our future leaders and reverse the progressive re-colonization being surreptitiously sewn into our nation’s fabric, the best first step is to make Islamic and Christian religious knowledge compulsory NOW!
Kalu, a teacher, wrote in from Nnewi.