Nigeria is rife with misinformation. It is the very lifeblood of our political class, the primary way with which they have been able to navigate our nationhood especially since the advent of democracy in the year 1999. The Nigerian political understands that knowledge in the hands of the proletariat is a dangerous tool and have gone out of their way to ensure we are denied it. One of the major casualties of their campaign has been our educational system, and their most recent attack, the scrapping of history as a subject in Nigerian schools and its removal from our National curriculum.

Though no major reasons were offered to justify this decision, many believe this was done to erase the evil records of some military leaders in the country that have made and are still making attempts to return to political power as civilian leaders. As a result the scrapping will limit the amount of unsavoury information about them in public domain. Whether this view is correct or not, we can all unanimously agree that the scrapping of History from our education is a very bad portent.

Majority of avoidable “pits” we’ve fallen into as a country is a result of our poor grasp of history . In developed nations of the world, they hold their history jealously as a result all citizens are authority when it comes to the retelling of their histories, and it is not uncommon to see ordinary citizens in first world countries appoint themselves historians of their towns, families and cities and put in the work to properly document their histories.

For example, In United States of America there is an Institute where researchers go to study about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington among other individuals

Here in Nigeria there is hardly any institute you can go to study about leaders like Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir. Ahmadu Bello among others.

What we’ve done is to kill our history and we will surely pay a greater price for it sooner or later as our upcoming generations may be left with little or nothing to know about their past.

What happened at the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday November 14, 2017 where there was a unanimous decision that the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa was a lawful one was a tip of the ice berg in what to come to us as a Nation if we keep toying with our history.

If individuals in their 40s that witnessed the unjust killing of the Ogoni9 in 1995 could describe it as a lawful killing in 2017, it means those that were not born at the time will be left with nothing other than a warped sense history of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, his colleagues and what they stood for.

The return of history to our schools is not an option but a must to save our history from being warped to suit the desires of a powerful few.

Editor