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WAEC failure rate: digging Nigeria’s future into a hole

September 24, 2009

It was Issa Aremu who told me the story in Ilorin, early this week. When WAEC results were released in 2008, the Registrar of the examination body noted that the failure rate was worse than the previous year. However, it did not set alarm bells ringing in the country and the ruling elite carried on its irresponsible habit of looting the country blind. But when the stock market lost about ten percent of its value, it was as if the world was about to come to an end!


A lot of looted fund had been invested therein, and Nigeria’s ruling elite was inconsolable in its sadness! Well, a similar scenario is now on our hands, because last Friday the West African Examination Council released the results of the May/June 2009 Senior School Certificate Examination.

Announcing the results in Lagos, WAEC’s Head of National Office, Dr. Iyi  Uwadiae said out of a total of 1,373, 009 candidates who sat for the examinations, only356, 981 candidates, representing 25. 99 percent obtained credits and above in English Language and Mathematics and at least three other subjects. What the statistics released underlined was that there was a failure rate of seventy-five percent during this year’s examinations! Incredible as these figures are, they do not seem to have concerned all who matter in our country. Nobody, at least within the ruling circles: neither of our teacher president and vice-president or their birthday partying minister of education, Sam Egwu, has made any statement about the unacceptable and worrisome trend in the results of the basic requirement for admission into university. The truth is that they cannot be bothered.

But the Nigerian people must be bothered. This is because the results are a fair reflection of the deep crisis in the nation’s educational system which has built up over the years. If the foundation of education is as crisis-ridden as has been so graphically expressed by the WAEC figures, then it is clear that there really is no hope for Nigeria’s future, whatsoever. It is like digging ourselves into a hole, and choosing to continue to dig. There can be no salvation with such a hare-brained decision! The Nigerian ruling class is a past master in delusions and bombast, regularly setting empty targets of development which deep down it knows will never be met; the latest is the Vision 20-20-20. Whatever it means! How does a nation set itself visioning targets when it is not even getting the fundamentals right beats the imagination!

The truth is that over the past quarter of a century or thereabouts, we have seen a gradual slide at the primary and post-primary levels of our educational system. These have been largely due to the sharp rise in enrolment which the UPE of the 1970s encouraged and then the subsequent per capita drop in investment in the sectors; remunerations for teachers suffered; the inspectorate systems declined and as the number of students outstripped the capacity of schools, the new philosophy of the market, which valorized money above all other values, made teaching an unattractive profession; while the incentive to study hard was lost among the students. Our schools are no longer the redoubts of hope for a better future earned from honesty and hard work but are today warrens of earning the fast, not-worked-for, buck; cultism; rape; clandestine and open prostitution; violence and of teaching and administrative staff extorting money from students and parents colluding to help their children cheat through schools, from primary, through secondary and up to the tertiary level!

This is the foundation upon which Nigeria’s future is being constructed by its unconscionable ruling class. Again the reason is not farfetched: they have stolen enough money to send their children abroad or to very exclusive schools here. There have been half-hearted reforms that do not go far enough or really miss the point about this very fundamental basis for national progress.  Some of these alleged reforms have included open humiliation of teachers while monies thrown at the problems at hand, end up in the pockets of bureaucrats and politicians. But in most cases, even the problems are ignored as if they do not matter. So while the public primary and post-primary school system is allowed to go to the dogs, they build private schools that their children attend before being farmed out into exclusive schools abroad, with money stolen from our public purse.

Patriots must fight to reclaim the public school system and ensure they work efficiently because that is the only basis upon which a national project of education for the liberation of Nigeria from its bandit ruling class can be constructed. Even the most advanced capitalist country, the USA, invests heavily in its public school system! The WAEC results have come against the backdrop of the killings of BOKO HARAM disciples, condemned for preaching against Western education. Yet our universities have been closed for about four months under the presidency of a teacher; isn’t that worse than BOKO HARAM? That same president is said to be away in Saudi Arabia to attend the opening of a university! It is a joke carried too far, but these jokers are toying with the future of Nigeria!

STEVE OROSANYE: HEAD OF SERVICE OR HEAD OF STATE?
Steve Orosanye is an example of everything wrong with Nigeria! He came into limelight as Personal Assistant to Anthony Ani, Sani Abacha’s Minister of Finance. In short, he was a “Boy-Boy” of military dictatorship. But Steve is a cat of many lives! He wormed his way into the presidency of the disgraced despot, Olusegun Obasanjo, serving for eight years. This man that has no civil service background, except his service to military and civilian dictators, was appointed Head of Service, by Umaru Yar’adua, in clear violation of the rules. We are not questioning his competence nor where he comes from or his religion, but the principle is that he is not a civil servant and therefore shouldn’t head the service! He is also a member of the Board of CBN (in his “personal capacity”, whatever that means); he is also a member of NITEL’s board, which is headed by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Information. Like a hydra-headed monster, he popped up again in a committee of the Under-17 championship! Wetin? Must he be everywhere?

KIDNAP OF KADUNA’S SSG
Kidnappers invaded Kaduna’s SSG’s residence and took him away, asking a sum of Forty Million Naira! These are mere rumblings of the looming anarchy in Nigeria. The ruling class loots the nation and criminal groups want a bite of the cherry!

RE: NOW I FEEL TRULY VULNERABLE
Since my mother’s death last Tuesday, September 15th, 2009, I have received an outpouring of sympathy from Nigerians from all walks of life. I cannot make a list here, but we truly appreciate your as we mourn our mother, Hajiya Zainab Mahmoud Kawu. Out of the grief is strengthened determination to work for the liberation of Nigeria and a better world. That is the fitting tribute to her.


Is’haq Modibbo Kawu
[email protected]
0805. 9100368 [SMS TEXTS ONLY]
 

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