The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has urged
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo to do something about
the exclusion of Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK)
from secondary schools curriculum.

Samson Ayokunle, president of CAN, made the
demand during in a meeting with Osinbajo on
Wednesday.

Ayokunle described the new curriculum as “divisive
and ungodly”.

He explained that although the Islamic Religious
Knowledge (IRK) was initially affected, it was later
reintroduced in the curriculum.

The CAN president stressed that If the curriculum is
implemented, “it would lead us to a godless nation
with violence and all forms of ungodliness as the order
of the day”.

“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 mitral 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,” he said.

“It was some three or two decades ago when our
education planners started removing the teaching of
religious values through the cancellation of morning
devotion in schools that all these violence by youths in
different forms came on board. I was in a meeting
yesterday with some Muslim leaders where one of
them also expressed his fears about the dangers in
this new curriculum.

“Furthermore, this curriculum went ahead to introduce
Islamic Arabic Studies in another section together with
French and made one of the two compulsory for the
student. You are aware that we have very low
percentage of French teachers in all our secondary
schools in Nigeria. I am sure that over 80 percent of
our secondary schools do not have French teachers at
all but have Arabic teachers.

“The implication is that Christian students would have
no choice than to study Arabic. If a Christian student
voluntarily goes to study Islamic religious studies,
there is nothing bad in that because some of us in
both religions had done that before for better
understanding, however, where the student is
tactically forced into studying it because the
alternative subject does not have teacher to teach it, it
is a great problem tending to Islamisation.

“Still in this curriculum, Islamic religious knowledge
was equally made available as a subject in another
section without any corresponding availability of
Christian religious knowledge. Is this not a divisive
curriculum that can set the nation on fire?

“Is this fair to millions of Christians in this nation? A
Christian student in a secondary school in Kwara state
had the body lacerated with cane by the Arabic
teacher because the pupil refused to do Arabic studies
when French teacher was not available and Christian
religious knowledge, Hebrew or Greek were not part of
the options at all.”

CAN also demanded the arrest and prosecution of
“murderous herdsmen” and the prosecution of those
who called for the expulsion of Igbo from the north.

TheCable