By GBEMIGA OLAKUNLE
I am not an alarmist or a rumour-monger and I don’t like to sound as one of such characters due to the kind of unnecessary controversies that they usually generate with their unfounded stories. However, in order to unearth the facts about stories, one may need to relate them so as to attract comments that can either authenticate or debunk them. One of such is about the above subject matter that was sent to my WhatsApp earlier this week.
Th e story claimed that the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) included Arabic Studies as one of the courses to be part of General Studies carrying 2 units/ credits in the universities. And with its purported inclusion in a pre-requisite course like General Studies (GS), Arabic studies will be mandatory for all undergraduate students.
Th at means such students have to learn Arabic studies as part of the General Studies and pass it before they can graduate. Th e story stated that NUC and JAMB also proposed that Arabic studies can be an alternative pre-requisite to students of management, accountancy, banking and fi nance, etc thus putting it at par with English, mathematics and economics.
I do not know whether the purported review of the NUC curriculum was done during the tenure of Professor Dibu Ojerinde, the former Registrar of JAMB or its current Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede. And to his credit, it was during the tenure of Professor Oloyede as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Kwara state that the university was transformed and in three consecutive years rated as the Best Public University in Nigeria. But due to some of his past comments on socio-religious matters in the country, some social commentators have labeled him an Islamic fundamentalist or even a Jihadist in the assessment of others. We do not know whether his antecedents in the religious circles qualifi ed him to be so labeled or tagged. Th ese days most stories that eventually found their ways into the mainstream media and sometimes make front page headlines started from the social media as trending stories. It should be noted that the relegation of the Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) as a core subject for secondary school students by the Federal Ministry of Education (FME) was almost leading to a state of anarchy before our House of Representatives intervened to return to status quo ante. Before this was done, there were reports especially from Kwara State that a particular teacher fl ogged some Christian students who refused to attend Islamic Religious Knowledge (IRK) class since there was no teacher to teach CRK. Th is ugly development forced the leadership of Christian Association of Nigerian (CAN) to make a protest visit to the Presidency.
An infl uential affi liate of CAN-Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) convened an emergency meeting of its founding fathers including Pastor E.A. Adeboye, Bishop Francis Wale Oke, Pastor (Mrs.) Mercy Ezekiel, Bishop Mike Okonkwo, among others, to condemn this policy. Th ey did not stop at that, the PFN leaders encouraged the Christian secondary students to shun IRK classes if the state government refuses to employ teachers to teach CRK. Th e issue was becoming another headache for the Presidency before the House of Representatives came to the rescue of Acting President Yemi Osinbajo through a motion by Ms Lar.
And so having doused that religious tension with the reversal of the controversial policy on the intervention of the National Assembly, we fi nd it diffi cult to believe that another controversial curriculum will still smuggle its way into the educational system. We still want to believe that this story is a wild rumour until NUC debunks or confi rms it. Such stories should not be allowed to hang as baseless rumour and if it is a new policy, there should adequate explanations or clarifi cations to back it up. Whatever may be its own side of the story, the concerned authorities should note that issues that border on religion and ethnicity are very sensitive in this country and so caution should be the watch word for our policy makers.
Until the NUC shares its own side of the story, some keen observers of our socio-political and religious systems may see the sudden alleged inclusion of Arabic studies as a compulsory course in our universities as another attempt to Islamise the country through the back-door even though the Acting President and the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar III, head of Muslim community in Nigeria, were always apt to allay the Nigerian populace’s fears.
On Tuesday, July 25, 2017 I read a story on the social media credited to the self-acclaimed supreme leader of the Biafra agitators that after his kinsmen have achieved or realized their dream of having their own Biafra nation, they will still stay put and will refuse to quit Nigeria. I think the man is living in a fools’ paradise because one cannot have his cake and eat it, as the adage goes. May be what the British citizen, Nnamdi Kanu, who is leading the secessionist movement, does not know is that once a group of people breaks away to establish their own sovereign entity, their status will automatically change and become foreigners wherever they reside outside their new nation.
Th ey will have to obtain residency/ work permit in order to continue their stay in the country where they separated from. Apart from ceasing to serve in the public service, the continued ownership of their private businesses may not be guaranteed. Th is is why Igbo leaders of thought are treading the path of caution instead of joining the bandwagon. Such elders, who witnessed the Biafran war of 1967-1970 that predated the birth of Kanu, have chosen the path of dialogue to negotiate their demands from the Nigerian nation which are not peculiar to the Ibo tribe alone. Other ethnic nationalities are equally demanding for some level of justice and equity through dialogue with superior arguments and not through confrontations and issuance of threats. NUC should, therefore, not add to the plethora of security challenges the nation is currently battling with. Instead, they should be sensitive to Nigeria’s religious composition.
