An Articulated Silencing: Curriculum Politics, Historical Erasure, and the Systematic Distortion of Igbo Heritage in Nigeria

History education in postcolonial Nigeria is devoted to power, identity, and curriculum politics. This paper appraises the controversy surrounding the claimed Federal Ministry of Education’s non-approval of the textbook Living History, debating that it echoes a wider design of epistemic relegation and historical muzzling of Igbo heritage. Rather than a purely procedural decision, the episode discloses how curriculum gatekeeping and appeals to “national values” function to privilege dominant chronicles while rendering Igbo history partial, distorted, or peripheral. Drawing on discourse analysis and postcolonial theory, the article validates how colonial and postcolonial frameworks have misrepresented Igbo political and cultural systems, reinforcing hierarchical constructions of national history. The paper further places language as a critical site of historical struggle, showing how the dominance of English in history education contributes to epistemic loss. Building on the author’s doctoral research, it argues that integrating English and Igbo offers a pathway toward historical recovery, cultural justice, and genuinely plural national memory.