Onome Amuge
Tunji Alausa, Nigeria’s minister of education, recently announced that Mathematics would no longer be a compulsory subject for Arts students seeking admission into tertiary institutions. While the move initially appeared to offer long-awaited relief to students who have long struggled with the subject, Anthony Kila, a jurist, political economist, and director of the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies (CIAPS), views it as a troubling step backward for the nation’s intellectual and economic development.
Calling the move “a miscalculation with grave national consequences,” Kila has launched a civic initiative titled #LetOurChildrenCount, aimed at reversing what he calls an educational error that subtracts from the nation’s intellectual strength.
The campaign, unveiled at a virtual press briefing on Thursday, seeks to rally parents, teachers, students, and policymakers against the exclusion of Mathematics from the core admission requirements for Arts programmes. For Kila, the issue goes beyond curriculum reform. According to him, it is about the kind of citizens Nigeria aims to produce in a rapidly changing, knowledge-driven global economy.
In his keynote address, titled “We Must Not Subtract Sense from Schooling,” Kila argued that Mathematics is not simply a subject on the timetable but a mental discipline that builds reasoning, structure, and fairness in thought.
“To say that Arts students no longer need Mathematics is to say that poets should not count and philosophers should not reason. A society that abolishes Mathematics is not promoting inclusion — it is endorsing confusion,” he said.
He proposed instead that the Ministry of Education should “reform, not remove” the teaching of Mathematics by developing a new curriculum called ‘Mathematics for the Humanities’ — a framework tailored to the arts, law, social sciences, and creative disciplines, focusing on logic, statistics, and analytical reasoning relevant to those fields.
The Minister’s decision, announced earlier in the week, has triggered an intense national debate. While some educators and parents have applauded the change as a way to ease student stress and improve admission access, a growing chorus of critics warns that it undermines Nigeria’s academic integrity.
Universities, employers, and economic analysts have expressed concern that removing Mathematics from the admission criteria could produce graduates with weaker analytical capacity and poorer employability in a world increasingly shaped by data and technology.
Kila joins this coalition of dissenters. “Mathematics is the grammar of reason. Even poets count syllables. Even musicians calculate rhythm. Let us not produce a generation that cannot count what counts,” he said.
Through #LetOurChildrenCount, CIAPS and its partners plan to mobilise civic engagement around the issue. The campaign will include petitions to the National Council on Education, the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Assembly, and the Council of State. It will also convene stakeholder dialogues involving teachers, parents, students, and policymakers, as well as youth-led digital campaigns across social media.
An Education Roundtable is also being planned, where educators, researchers, and civic leaders from across Nigeria and the diaspora will present evidence-based arguments on the importance of maintaining Mathematics as a universal requirement.
In an interview with ARISE News, Kila described the Education Ministry’s policy as a very bad move that undermines the intellectual rigor of university education. “It’s a retreat, not a reform. If we are going to touch Mathematics, what we should be doing is improving the way it is taught, not abolishing it,” he said.
He argued that the government’s energy would be better spent fixing the structural challenges of public education; from poor facilities to inadequate teacher training.
According to Kila, removing Mathematics because students find it difficult is akin to surrendering to failure. “The idea that we should drop a subject because students struggle with it is wrong,” he said. “If you think it’s difficult, you improve the way it’s taught. You don’t run away from it.”
Beyond the immediate policy debate, Kila sees a broader national risk. He argues that removing Mathematics from the educational foundation will erode Nigeria’s intellectual competitiveness.
According to him, every student, whether pursuing law, music, or philosophy, requires a minimum level of mathematical literacy before entering university. “The kind of people that should go to university should have certified knowledge of Maths to all cultural levels. That credit in Mathematics is proof of formation; it shows you can think, reason, and solve,” he added.
He noted that Nigeria’s challenge is not excessive rigour but inadequate preparation. Weak foundational learning, poor teacher quality, and overcrowded classrooms have combined to make Mathematics one of the most feared subjects in schools. Yet, he insists, lowering the bar will not solve that problem.
“We should not confuse inclusion with dilution. We should improve access and quality at the same time. Let us invest in better teachers, better tools, and better training, not in shortcuts,” he asserted.
Nigeria’s move to protect children from social media use