The Researcher’s Journal (TRJ) Vol 1, Issue No.1,
pp 65 – 78; DEC, 2017
Christian-Muslim superiority crises: Implication for Education and Sustainable National Development in the 21st century in Nigeria.
1 Okpachui, A. A., 2 Ntamu, G. U. and 1 Ashipu, Bernard
1 Department Of Christian Religious Studies, F.C.E., Obudu;
agweyeokpachui@gmail.com; Mobile: 07032429505
2 Dept. of Religious and Cultural Studies, University of Calabar, Nigeria
There has been a silent battle for supremacy between Islam and Christianity, within the country and these supremacy battles has resulted into a serious crises dimension that this has seriously affected education in the country. When crises situation occurs, most often than north, such crises occurs within educational settings, students, staffs and school administrators abandon such crisis situation for their safety, they also abandon studies and lectures. Most often schools within such areas and educational activities are truncated over a long period of time. At the end, schools and other educational facilities must be renovated and reconstructed, curriculum must be covered, and teachers must be in a rush to make sure curriculum contents are covered. Most often, courses are jammed packed to cover the school curriculum. The result will be that our students are not properly taught, hardly do they earn or acquire any meaningful knowledge to lead a self reliant and self sufficient live for themselves and the society. In the long run, they contribute absolutely nothing to sustainable national development. This paper looked at the roles the various religion played in bringing about education, the effect of these fights for supremacy, the impact on the students and how these students become self reliant and contribute to sustainable national development. The review found that religious crisis has caused a lot of damage to our educational system and most of the products of these educational institutions are hardly self reliant, they only acquire such certificates to gain white collar jobs, hence their contribution to sustainable national development is at best very minimal. This calls for a sober reflection on the future of our country, which this paper found to be very bleak if this continues. It was recommended that curriculum designers should introduce courses that will help different adherents of the different religion to understand the belief system, the teaching and practice of other religion and why they behave the way they do. It was also recommended that the best approach to reduce religious crisis in Nigeria is open dialogue.
Keywords: Religion superiority; Christianity, Islam, sustainable national development, educational development, self reliance and self sufficient. centres.