ERASING A PEOPLE FROM THE CHALKBOARD

MARTIN EJIDIKE argues that Igbo-speaking states should reject revisionism in Junior Secondary Curricula

Reports that an approved junior secondary school history textbook in Nigeria, ”Living History for Junior Secondary Schools”, contains no substantive reference to the Igbo as an ethnic group are deeply troubling. If accurate, the omission raises serious questions about both educational standards and national intent. It is especially disturbing because it comes after the long-criticized removal of history from the school curriculum and its recent restoration. The question must be asked: was history reintroduced to illuminate the past or to selectively redraw it?

History is not a decorative mural that can be repainted to suit present preferences. It is a structural beam in the civic house. Remove one pillar and the integrity of the whole is weakened. A curriculum that excludes one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups is not merely incomplete. It is distorted.

In a country as diverse and delicately balanced as Nigeria, curriculum design is not clerical routine. It is nation-building work. What children read today becomes what citizens assume tomorrow. Foundational texts shape civic imagination, belonging, and legitimacy. An omission of this magnitude is not neutral. Silence in a national narrative is an editorial decision with political consequences.

Education is the first formal handshake between the state and the child. Through curriculum, a nation answers three essential questions: Who belongs? Who helped build this country? Who matters?

Excluding the Igbo from a national history framework hands students a broken compass. It suggests that some peoples are peripheral, some contributions dispensable, and some identities negotiable. That is not education. It is narrative engineering.

The Igbo experience is not a regional footnote but a central pillar of Nigeria’s historical and contemporary development. From early African civilizations and archaeology, evidenced by iron smelting in Lejja dating to around 2000 BC and the sophisticated bronze and iron works of Igbo-Ukwu, radiocarbon dated to the 9th century AD, to distinctive pre-colonial republican systems of governance, the Igbo have made foundational contributions to the Nigerian story. These include complex community institutions, extensive commercial and migratory networks across West Africa, and significant roles in anti-colonial resistance and constitutional development. The civil war and its enduring lessons on unity, justice, and national reconciliation, as well as post-war reconstruction, entrepreneurship, and the dynamism of the global Igbo diaspora, further underscore this legacy. To remove these strands is to reduce the teaching of Nigeria to a mere outline—stripped of its depth, complexity, and substance.

Nations rarely fracture first through violence. They fracture through stories poorly told and stories deliberately omitted. When students inherit a filtered past, they inherit a fragile sense of citizenship.

Curriculum revisionism produces predictable consequences: alienation, superficial unity, and deferred instability. Students from excluded communities disengage when they cannot find themselves in the national record. A single-story narrative creates the illusion of cohesion while deepening misunderstanding. Suppressed histories do not disappear. They accumulate pressure.

Nigeria has already paid dearly for historical amnesia. Textbooks should not become new instruments of it.

As a federation rather than a monoculture, states in Nigeria should exercise meaningful authority in education policy, language, and cultural programming. Igbo-speaking states are therefore justified in coordinated action where national materials fail basic standards of accuracy and inclusion.

State governments with significant Igbo populations, particularly in the South East, South South, and North Central, should act jointly. They can commission an independent panel of historians and curriculum specialists to document omissions and distortions with scholarly precision, decline adoption of flawed materials, and develop a complementary, evidence-based curriculum framework. A corrected framework can then be submitted for national review and integration, while a temporary stopgap syllabus ensures continuity in instruction.

This is not about parallel histories. It is about preventing historical malpractice.

This argument is not a call for ethnocentric textbooks or grievance narratives. It is a call for accuracy, proportion, and inclusion. A credible Nigerian history curriculum must fairly represent Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, Ijaw, Kanuri, Tiv, Ibibio, and the many other peoples who share the national space.

Truth is not owned by any one group. But neither should it erase another. Confident nations do not fear complexity in their past. They teach it fully and responsibly.

Nigeria’s story is not a solo performance. It is an orchestra of histories, sometimes tense, often brilliant, always interconnected. Remove one section and the music turns false.

Students deserve the full score.

If the reported omission is confirmed, Igbo states should reject the text, demand correction, and if necessary produce academically rigorous alternatives that restore balance. Not as protest alone, but as contribution. Not as defiance, but as responsibility.

A nation that edits out its people edits down its future.

Dr Ejidike writes from New York