Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate, says removing history from
the Nigerian education curriculum cannot erase memories of the Biafran war.
Soyinka said this on Sunday while speaking at the 24th
edition of the Lagos Book and Arts Festival organised by Book Kraft.
The federal government had removed history studies from
primary and secondary schools’ curriculums from the 2009/2010 academic session.
In 2019, the government however ordered the reintroduction
of the subject.
Speaking about the role of memory in keeping historical
experiences, the Nobel laureate said the memories of the Biafran agitation can
never be wiped away from the people.
“Collective memory is the key because it is that memory
which is related to the mechanisms of relating reality to whatever narrative is
given to us. It is far more important and it is more dangerous because you can
get trapped in it because it is collected as a community activity and some of
that I think is happening to us here in Nigeria,” he said.
“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.
“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 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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