The G.O of RCCG, Pastor Adeboye; Living Faith Church, Bishop Oyedepo; TREM, Bishop Mike Okonkwo; Deeper Life Church, Pastor W.F Kumuyi among others, have ordered Christian students across the country not to attend Arabic Studies classes following the reports that the subject has been made compulsory in schools.
Rev. (Dr.) Mercy Ezekiel, the National Coordinator of Christian Pentecostal Mission (CPM), Pastor Wale Oke and the G.O of the Thronegrace Mission, Pastor Emmanuel Nuhu Kure, were also present at the meeting.
The Christian leaders called for immediate reversal of the revised Basic Education Curriculum, insisting that Christian Religious Studies (CRS) should stand on its own and not be part of an omnibus subject known as Religion and National Values.
The top pastors spoke, last week, after a meeting in Lagos under the auspices of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN). They explained that the FG has no right to force any Nigerian student at any level to study Arabic Studies.
Articulating the position of the Fellowship, Omobude, who is also the PFN National President, Oyedepo, Okonkwo and Wale Oke urged Christian students in any part of the country to resist such imposition, stressing that “we are aware of orchestrated plans to subtly use this policy as a means of forceful religious indoctrination and we maintain our stand against it.”
Oyedepo added: “Government has no right to force subjects on any any Nigerian child neither does it have the authority to drop Christian Religious Studies at the Senior Secondary School level while asking him/her to continue to read Islamic Studies which he/she cannot do at university level.”
