Sallah, School Breaks, and the Cost to Learning

In Nigeria, the intersection of faith and public life is a constant, powerful force. It shapes laws, dictates social norms, and, increasingly, determines when children go to school. The federal government declares national public holidays for major Christian and Muslim celebrations—a standard practice. However, a newer, more contentious trend has emerged: state-level governments unilaterally extending these holidays for schools, sparking a quiet crisis in the education sector.

Recent Sallah celebrations have brought this issue to the forefront. In states like Kwara and Osun, governments have declared breaks lasting up to ten days, far exceeding the two days allocated federally. While defended as a move to allow families more time for religious and cultural festivities, these extensions are not benign. They represent a critical nexus of political calculation, religious appeasement, and educational neglect that deserves scrutiny.

The Anatomy of an Extended Holiday

The pattern is becoming familiar. A few days before the federally-announced Eid-el-Kabir or Eid-el-Fitri holiday, a circular from a state Ministry of Education will announce a “special” extended break for all public and private primary and secondary schools. In 2023, the Kwara State government, for example, approved a 10-day holiday. The justification is typically couched in cultural sensitivity, allowing children to “celebrate with their parents.”

Opponents, however, see it differently. For private school proprietors and concerned parents, these abrupt declarations throw academic calendars into chaos. They force the cancellation of planned lessons and assessments, putting pressure on educators to compress an already dense curriculum into a shorter timeframe upon resumption. The core question arises: is this decision truly about religious celebration, or is it a populist gesture with little regard for its primary consequence—the erosion of learning?

The Unspoken Cost: Curriculum Disruption and Learning Loss

Every unscheduled day a child is out of school is a day of lost learning. Nigeria’s education system is already under immense strain, grappling with over-crowded classrooms, under-funded schools, and a foundational learning crisis. The World Bank has repeatedly highlighted the severity of “learning poverty” in Nigeria, where a large percentage of 10-year-olds cannot read or understand a simple text.

Against this backdrop, arbitrarily subtracting a week or more from the school term is academically indefensible. The assumption that learning can simply be “paused” and “resumed” without consequence is flawed. As educational analyst Rotimi Olawale notes, “The Nigerian curriculum is time-bound. When you lose five instructional days, you cannot magically recover them. Either topics are rushed, or they are skipped entirely.” This disproportionately affects students from lower-income backgrounds who lack access to supplementary tutoring or educational resources at home.

A Question of Law and Fairness

The holiday extensions also force a difficult conversation about Nigeria’s constitutional identity. Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria states, “The Government of the Federation or of a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion.” While the state is not hostile to religion, it is mandated to be neutral.

When a state government disproportionately extends holidays for one religion over another, it challenges this principle of neutrality. It creates a hierarchy of faiths in the public square and provokes inevitable “whataboutism.” Groups like the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) have historically advocated for such extensions, arguing for parity with perceived long breaks for Christian holidays. Conversely, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and other civil society groups often raise alarms about creeping state-sponsored religious favoritism.

This debate, however, misses the larger point. The solution to perceived inequality should not be to level down by granting educationally detrimental holidays to all, but to level up by establishing a standardized, predictable, and faith-neutral academic calendar for all public schools.

Beyond Celebration to Accountability

The discourse around Sallah school breaks is a microcosm of a larger Nigerian challenge: the difficulty of separating political acts from governance principles. Granting an extended holiday is an easy, visible way for a state government to appeal to a significant portion of its populace. It costs little in direct expenditure but wins immense political and religious goodwill.

The real cost is paid by the students. It’s a deferred cost, hidden in the gradual decline of educational standards and the widening of learning gaps. It’s time to reframe the conversation. The issue is not about whether children should celebrate Sallah; it is about whether our educational policies should be determined by religious sentiment or by the evidence-based needs of our students. Nigeria’s future depends on our ability to prioritize the latter.