Professor Wole Soyinka, a Nobel laureate, said he now knows why history as a subject was removed from the Nigerian school curriculum in the 2009-2010 academic year.
He stated that eliminating history from school curricula will not erase memories of the Biafran War. The Biafran War, often known as the Nigerian Civil War, was fought between Nigeria and the breakaway Republic of Biafra.
Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, the commander of the secessionist state, announced Biafra’s independence from Nigeria, led by Gen. Yakubu Gowon, in 1967.
The conflict concluded on January 15, 1970, with an estimated two to three million people murdered. From the 2009/2010 academic year, the Nigerian government abolished history studies from primary and secondary school curricula, most likely in response to calls for the reinstatement of the Republic of Biafra due to perceived marginalisation in the country.
However, the government ordered the subject’s reinstatement in 2019, despite the fact that many schools do not have history professors. However, speaking on Sunday at the 24th edition of the Lagos Book and Arts Festival organised by Book Kraft, Soyinka stated that the people’s memory of the Biafran agitation will never be erased.
Soyinka, who spoke about the role of memory in preserving historical memories, cautioned that we must not become prisoners of that collective memory.
“Collective memory is the key,” said the Nobel laureate, “because it is that memory that is tied to the mechanics of linking reality to whatever story is presented to us.”
It is significantly more essential and hazardous because you may become stuck in it since it is collected as a community activity, which I believe is occurring here in Nigeria.
“I’m referring of course to Biafra. The collective memory there is very strong, even before the war, I warned that this collective memory might remain to plague efforts at nation being and that therefore, everything should be done to avoid that war.
“When I use expressions like, Biafra can never be defeated, can never be wiped away, people thought I was talking about just the battlefield.
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“I was talking about, a notion, a passion which enters the collective memory in active life not just as a past narrative. this is what I was warning against. And we’re seeing it today.
“Governments sometimes think that by undertaking the criminal act of removing history from schools, something which I never believed could ever happen to us. The government actually stopped the teaching of history in schools.
“So naive, so stupid as not to recognise that there is something called memory, collective memory, active memory in the present.
“If the purpose was to obliterate the war or memories of the war, what about events that led up to the war? What about the position, the narrative of existence in relation to the outer world?
How do you obliterate for heaven’s sake? “Yet people sat down and went about their business when they removed history from the curriculum.
“That’s what I mean by saying that we must always adjudicate the present by history, by the collective memory.
“At the same time, however, we must take care not to become prisoners of that collective memory. That member must be able to use our collective memory in a progressive, productive, creative, and advanced way.”
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