Sundiata Post – A Professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Ilorin, A. A. Adeyinka, has punched holes in the claims by presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.), that he sat for and got credit pass in Hausa Language from the Provincial College (now Government College, Katsina), in 1961. He said no school in Nigeria offered subjects in local languages at the time.
Adeyinka’s research report, titled ‘Major Trends in Curriculum Development in Nigeria’, had further chipped away the credibility of the Statement of Result released by the college to support Buhari’s claims that he attended secondary school.
According to the his research, available at www.unilorin.edu, prior to the emergence of a centralised government by the regime of General Yakubu Gowon from 1966 to 1975, all regions in Nigeria had different academic curricula. He added that it was only the Western Region that offered a local language as a subject in both their curriculum and school certificate examinations.
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The university don said it was after a central government was formed and a universal educational curriculum was developed and adopted that other local languages were included in schools curriculums in 1974.
He listed subjects in the academic curriculum to include English Language, Biology, Commerce, Principles of Accounts, Health Science, Literature in English, Bible Knowledge, History, Geography, Yoruba, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry.
According to Adeyinka, Yoruba entered the academic curriculum following the recommendations of a Commission set up to review the academic curriculum for schools in the then Western Region.
He wrote: “In the former Western Region, for example, both the Banjo Report (1961) and the Taiwo Report (1968) recommended the revision of the school syllabuses and the introduction of a new structure of education. The Banjo Report specifically recommended a new model for secondary education, comprising junior and senior secondary schools. The curriculum of the former should be comprehensive. This was partly the origin of the Aiyetoro Comprehensive School experiment started in 1963. The Taiwo Committee recommended that the primary-school curriculum should be overhauled and new syllabuses prepared in such subjects as Mathematics and Social Studies. Similar recommendations were made in the East (Dike 1959, Alvan Ikoku, 1964).”
General Buhari’s school certificate became controversial following his inability to present his certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission. The ruling PDP threatened to challenge his qualification to contest the February 14 election in court but on Wednesday, his alma mater, released statement of his result.
