Archbishop Alaba Job, a former president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), has bemoaned the fact that a generation unable of discriminating between right and wrong was produced by the inability to change the educational system.
Job attributed this tendency to the disregard of legitimate calls to revise the country’s educational curriculum by succeeding governments. “Removing subjects like history from the curriculum undermines national identity,” the cleric, a former Archbishop Emeritus of Ibadan, said.
He claimed that government inaction has continued since the 1980s, despite calls to leaders to act morally.
“My message to the country in 1984 was that if we continue with our current educational system, our children will eventually be unable to distinguish between good and wrong. And it has happened.
“We have communicated with the government. Unfortunately, though, it paid no attention. Therefore, the spirit that underpins the curriculum is more important than the curriculum itself.
What do you want us to learn, for example, when history is taken out of the curriculum? That we ought to lose our identity? According to the cleric, “where necessary, the government must take action.”
He said that people in and out of government are not happy with the way things are going right now, and that their discontent stems from a common concern for mankind.
He called on the government to rectify the moral and spiritual failings in the nation’s educational system. In addition to expressing gratitude to the university for commemorating him, the clergyman pointed out that more work must be done to advance the tertiary education sub-sector.
According to Prof. Hyacinth Ichoku, vice-chancellor of Veritas University, the university has done exceptionally well in the last year on both a national and worldwide scale.
Rev. Ignatius Kaigama, the Catholic Archbishop of the Abuja Diocese, urged the graduating students to be leaders in their communities and make constructive contributions to the nation’s growth.
