By PRISCA SAM-DURU
In its renewed efforts towards addressing the vaccum created as a result of the removal of history as a subject from the school curriculum, the management and staff of Cyndees International Schools, Ewu Owa Gberigbe, Ikorodu, Lagos, took a practical step recently,when it took the children on an excursion to the Badagry Slave Centre. • The Children at Late Chief Seriki Williams tomb and slave museum The excursion had the primary objective of ensuring that the students and pupils are equipped with historical knowledge about Nigeria. The visit to Badagry, a small coastal town located between Lagos and Seme Border, Benin Republic with an atmosphere so serene, was an amazing experience for the children who were perhaps, enjoying for the first time, the opportunity to learn some of the events that shaped Nigeria’s history as well as some of her beautiful culture and heritage. Badagry is truly home for the most educating blend of stunning art and history and as the local tour guide took the students from one point to the other, their excitement grew. Children love story telling and the guide cleverly utilised this method to drive home every point.
They were taught history in a very entertaining style. The tour kicked-off with a visit to Badagry Heritage Museum which habours comprehensive collection of slave trade history and relics. There, the children viewed images that vividly describe what really happened during the slave trade era. Welcome to Badagry Heritage Museum, the place where Christianity was first preached in Nigeria, the slaves drinking pot, Henry Townsend’s statue, Brazillian Baracoon Building, Art Work displaying the sorrowful tears of a slave in the Barracoon are some of the notable signs and features of the centre. The students were taken to see the tomb and Slave Museum of Chief Seriki Faremi Abass Williams, the slave who later turned a merchant after his freedom. They were shown the place that served as room where the slaves where kept for about forty days before they were sold to foreign slave masters. The visit to Late Chief Seriki Williams Abass’ Museum largely relived the ugly memory and the mind-boggling account of how some of the forefathers of Nigeria were traded for commodities such as pots, umbrella, mirror, wine, etc. After that, they saw the first story building in Nigeria and the first Bible that the missionaries brought to Nigeria. They proceeded to the Aquatic jungle where many of them enjoyed the privilege of seeing an aircraft live and also entering into it. “Education of the children is not meant to take place only in the classroom”, the Headmistress Admin, Cyndees Montesorri School, Mrs Flora Olika began explaining. According to her, the excursion became necessary because “Sometimes you find out that children just grow up within the confines of their immediate environment. They do not have the opportunity to know how life outside their environment looks like. So, it was a great opportunity for them to see what Badagry looks like. In most of their text books, they’ve read about slave trade in Nigeria so, for them to see things real in Badagry, makes more sense to them. The aquatic jungle was more than fun to them. The knowledge about something is better registered when children are taken through practical things that was the major reason for taking them to Badagry.” “The excursion was also to teach them some of the events that shaped Nigeria’s history. There is no way Nigeria’s history would be mentioned without slave trade being mentioned. It is part of teaching the children our history. We have been telling them stories about what the colonial masters did in Nigeria. Pictures and statues of some of the people that participated in bringing about what is known today as Nigeria and the man who actively participated in slave trade are on display at the centre and that make more sense to the children. Study of history is very important. I’m totally against the removal of history from the school’s curriculum and I support that it should be reintroduced in the school’s curriculum. For instance if all the things in Badagry Slave centre are not kept there for tourists, they would have been long forgotten. I know those things happened early in the 19th century or even before and many of our parents were not born by then much less most of us. Those things there help the younger generations and those to come after, to know what happened in the pre-history and history of Nigeria.”
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