The ill Advised Education Curriculum and Why It Failed. (Lessons in the Theology of Making Space for Others) Chibu Ndubuisi 24/07/2017

The ill Advised Education Curriculum and Why It Failed.

(Lessons  in the Theology of Making Space for Others)  Chibu   Ndubuisi  24/07/2017

Peace be to you

In a bid to educate and awaken the consciousness of the citizenry, liberate them from prejudices and ignorance, teach them the imperatives of tolerance that will make them develop optimally without inhibition. We have now inadvertently proposed an educational policy of disunity and war.  

The Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) developed a new curriculum that brought Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) and Islamic Religious Knowledge (IRK) to be under civic education without due consultation with relevant stakeholders in the sector which generated so much heat in the polity, until the Federal Government directed The Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council  (NEDRC) to separate them.      

How are the seeds sown? The seeds of peace are sown through consultations, Civil Society contributions, Local and international initiatives aggregated, summits organized and then declarations can be made. When all these avenues have been explored, it will reduce the tendency of some sections to cry foul.

Why do we keep fanning the embers of discord and intolerance in Nigeria when we still contend with the menace of religious fundamentalist like Boko Haram?  Why can’t we properly educate our people on our differences and search for a common ground we all can stand?   

Jonathan Sacks writes that “more than wealth and power, education is the key to human dignity” if education is the key to human dignity why are we trying to poison this process that dignifies us all with terrible policy initiatives? Joseph Nye writes that “peace is like oxygen when you don’t have it, it is all you can think about but when you do you don’t appreciate your good fortune” .

Jonathan Sacks notes that “academic life is about building bridges, not destroying them, opening mind not closing them, hearing both sides of an arguments and not one alone”. The best form of religious education is not the one that teaches us to hate and murder in the name of God, but one that speaks of our common humanity. God first made us in his image before we became Christians or Muslims so let’s learn to see Gods image in others not like us.

We have seen so much hate, violence and war in Nigeria. All religious leaders must be bold enough to heed the advice of Jonathan Sacks that “no soul was ever saved by hate, no truth ever proved by violence, no redemption ever bought by holy war and no religion won the admiration of the world by its capacity to inflict suffering on its enemies” .Why can’t we let politics to be politics and religion to be religion?   Why are we trying to make politics to become religion?

The Nigeria constitution (1999) chapter IV on fundamental Human Rights and clearly elucidates on the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion on section 38(2) it states particularly that “no person attending any place of education shall be required to receive religious instructions or take part in or attend any religious ceremony or observance relating to a religion other than his own or a religion not roved by his parents or guardian. Article 18 of the United Nation Universal Declaration of Human Rights on religious freedom is equally clear on that point of tolerance.

An educational curriculum without room for CRK is one that has no room for our differences and a nation without space for differences lacks the necessary ingredients for nation building. No wonder so many agitations from different parts of the nation.

Thomas Aquinas advised that we should “beware of the man of one book” and equally the institution of one mind. Jonathan  Sacks notes that “ a community of communities needs two kinds of religious strength, one that preserves our distinct traditions, and the other to bring them to an enlarged sense of common good.

After the holocaust, the papacy came up with the Vatican II council or the Nostra Aetate that reduced the animosity between Christians and Jews. “One of the best ways of breaking barriers between people or communities is through simple unforced acts of kindness” and “those who are confident in their faith are not threatened but enlarged by the different faiths of others”.

“Religious fundamentalism is the attempt to simplify a plural world in to one where every one is the same”.

The rules we make are subject to the rules we don’t make. The laws that govern circumstances are abolished by new circumstances that the initial circumstance never envisaged or factored. That is why we must always make space for such changes. That is the theology of making space.

A former American president advised that “eternal vigilance is the prize of liberty” if the religious fundamentalist come through educational curriculum, present to them that a better way to heal a fractured world is through little acts of kindness that binds us together.

Peace be with you.