In the 2009 secondary school examinations conducted by WAEC and NECO, newspaper reports indicate that the success rates were 25.99% and 10.7% respectively, that is for those with credits in five (5) subjects including English and Mathematics. (See the Nation Newspaper of 3rd November 2009.) It goes without saying that without these two subjects it is tantamount to failure, because English is vital for reading, writing and verbal expression; while Mathematics is very important for the current technological world of the 21st century, with all the logic it confers for deductive reasoning. With the success rates as reported the Presidency ordered an investigation to find out what went wrong. Soon after that the honourable Members of the House of Representative set up a committee to probe the reasons for the mass failure.
Every one seems to be falling on one another to find out what went wrong. When one read the newspaper reports on the probes one did not know whether to cry or to laugh. The laughter in such a situation can only be a malicious one. But it can only be the laugh of one whose house had fallen as a result of deliberate and criminal negligence and which borders on some form of insanity. To cry in such circumstance would be the result of a regret, which arises from a sudden realization of lost opportunity. Only a genuine patriot would cry.
It is possible that the probes are instituted as a result of a sense of guilt arising from the realization that sadly our educational system is dangerously headed for the rocks, if it has not yet reached its nadir.
Well, it seems to me that our rulers have suddenly woken up from their self-induced slumber, and have come face-to-face with the disaster in the sector. It is similar to a ship’s captain, who, despite all warnings that his ship was heading for a collision with an iceberg chose to ignore the warning and went to sleep, only to be woken up in the middle of the night by a minor explosion in the boiler room. As he staggers to his watch he is suddenly confronted by a looming iceberg that would destroy his ship and its crew. He stands there transfixed on the spot and not knowing what to do to avert the imminent disaster. It seems the presidency and the members of the House of Representatives have been jolted by the minor issue of the mass failure in this year’s WAEC and NECO examinations, while the major issue remains the eventual consequences of the mass failure.
The pity of it all is that those to conduct the probe seem to me as those who have done everything to bring our education to this sorry pass. It must not be forgotten that for decades, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been crying its eyes out, calling on government to finance education to a level that would raise the standards. NO ONE repeat NO ONE has ever been listening. Instead people talked of ASUU asking for more salaries. The multiplier effect of poor funding for tertiary institutions meant that the products of those institutions would be poorly prepared to take on the responsibilities in the secondary and primary levels.
One serious question to ask is “How did we get here?” For the serious minded in the land it was not hard to see that the slide down the slippery slope has been going on for decades, and while it was happening our rulers played polo, squash, wine and women. Like Nero they fiddled while our educational system burned. They were not bothered and are not bothered. Only a few days ago all the teachers in the land went on strike to press for better pay. The RULERS went to sleep and feigned ignorance of the cause of the strike and began to play politics with the whole exercise.
When in his first term as president of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo launched his UBE programme, this writer did an article titled “Education for the Future: The UBE Programme," which was published in the Vanguard newspaper of Thursday 23rd May 2002. The content of that article is as valid today as it was then. The article is a “must read” if we wish to have some idea as to how we got into this “hell hole” in our education system.
In addition to the issues raised in the said article, one would want to add the fact that the rulers of this country, whether “militicians” or politicians were NEVER interested in educating the citizenry so that they do not develop the capacity to ask critical questions concerning their governance. This accounts for why such a primary sector as education that produces the MUCH NEEDED manpower to service ALL other sectors for the development of the nation was relegated to the background and in some cases, pushed to the last levels in the allocation of resources during budgeting, while Defense, Works and such other sectors where contracts are awarded got the lion’s share. Yet our roads remain death traps, our Agriculture remains at the rudimentary level and we can not feed ourselves, our refineries remain comatose and we import petroleum products in spite of our endowments, the water pipes are dry and people produce their own water, power is not available and the people generate their own electricity, our hospitals have virtually collapsed and our rulers go abroad for their health needs when we should have produced our own doctors from our own institutions and equipped our own hospitals, etc, etc. The list is unending.
Some of the consequences of this neglect of, and other outrageous policies on, education have led to:
(a) Examination Malpractice
(b) Cultism in Schools
(c) Breeding of fraudsters (419ers)
(d) Destruction of Reading habits among the youth
(e) Very low moral standards
(f) Indiscipline among the young ones etc, etc.
For decades this nation has been sowing the wind in the education sector by its deliberate neglect, we are now reaping the initial warning rumblings of a whirlwind. It seems that this is the beginning. Soon the chickens will come home to roost
Those who say that they are our rulers seem not to be aware of what is demanded of them in the upbringing of the future generation of our people. They took instruction from World Bank and IMF, who say that all we need is rudimentary training to produce men and women who will be relevant in the industries. True scholarship should not be encouraged. In the meantime, these same rulers while implementing the IMF/World Bank prescriptions for the rest of the society send their own children and wards abroad where the system works and the education is sound.
In the heat of the news of the probe a national newspaper reported that about 34 (thirty-four) principals of the nation’s unity schools were likely to lose their jobs for the poor performance of their students at the WAEC and NECO examinations.
Those who ordered the probe seem to forget that discipline among the students of our schools is a VERY important component of their training in order for them to make a success of their endeavour. For those old enough to remember, at the end of the “Biafran War," government took over all schools and government functionaries virtually took over the administration of those schools. From the comfort of their offices they dictated the rules to be applied in all schools, and principals and their teachers were emasculated in relation to the administration of discipline. They thereby pulled the rug from under the feet of the principals and their staffs, who normally insist on the essential discipline of the wards entrusted to their care for the morals and discipline of our future leaders. Ironically, it is the government functionaries that are calling for a probe. One example will demonstrate this erosion of the power of the teachers in bringing about discipline among the young in the schools.
If we can remember, some time in the past, when Prof Jubril Aminu was the Federal Minister of Education, there was this story in the papers that a student of Queens College Yaba went to school with a “permed” hair when there was the school rule that no student must be so dressed while in school. News had it that the teacher on duty clipped the hair of the unruly girl. Her equally unruly father, we heard, headed for the school and pronto, clipped the hair of the dutiful but “impudent” teacher. The students were emboldened and discipline in the school was thus destroyed. It was said that the teacher in question retired from service to maintain her sanity and dignity. The principal was transferred to another school with less prestige. It was said that she retired voluntarily soon after. And the nation moved on as if nothing had happened.
This story spread like wild fire because it was Queens College. One can imagine what the teachers faced in less known schools. The glee with which students take the humiliation of their teachers can only be imagined. With this level of humiliation it is not difficult to surmise that teachers have become nonchalant in the discharge of their duty towards the children entrusted to them. It is only one step away from complete abandonment of their commitment towards the children and the nation. When you add the issue of their poor remuneration to the erosion of their power as disciplinarians, you will then get the reason for the kind of results we are talking about today.
Is it not a source of anger that the rulers who relegate the teachers to a position of unimportance should be asking them why the children have not done well as if they are slaves? Is it not clear that a teacher who cannot bring erring young ones under his/her control for their and the nation’s interest because he/she has been hamstrung, would become indifferent to their and the nation’s welfare? Have we become so obtuse as not to see the link between indiscipline among the youth and mass failure in examinations? Yet discipline has been removed from our school because parents and government functionaries have seriously interfered in the running of the schools.
The setting up of the probe is like a man who goes into the bush to fell a tree. Having done that, he runs to the road and starts shouting “who is felling the tree in the bush”. Both government and parents, over the years since the end of the war, conspired to bring our school system to where it is today, and then the government turns round to probe why there is mass failure. That to me is hypocrisy.
It should not be so quickly forgotten that time was when teachers were owed salaries for months on end at a stretch. The teachers are men and women who have families to look after and feed. In order not to abandon their responsibilities to their families, many teachers were forced to engage in trading in all sorts of merchandise to keep body and soul together and feed their families. Since discipline had been destroyed by the overbearing attitudes of parents and government functionaries, the children were left to their own devices while their teachers fended for their survival. Consequently many ennobling character traits associated with perseverance, good reading habits, childlikeness, honesty, hard work, respect for authority and for elders, truthfulness etc, etc, were left undeveloped. In the meantime most parents cannot get their children to do what is right, and the teacher who could help them had been emasculated. The result is that children refused to study diligently for their own good and no one could force them. Because many parents have lost the power to bring their children under control is the reason why when ASUU goes on strike, parents form prayer bands asking the union to call off the strike so the children could get away from home. In the mean time government remains ever reluctant to discuss with the union.
Alarmed by the looming possible failure of their wards at the major external examinations, parents, in collaboration with some principals of schools began to hire and pay “mercenaries” to write these examinations (WAEC, NECO, and JAMB) for their children. Thus we find undergraduates who never wrote any of these examinations for themselves. Many of these carried the malpractice into the Universities, and get University degrees without being able to make complete and correct sentences in English. It is from among this group of students who, of their own freewill approach some lecturers asking them to help them pass the examinations at whatever cost, some of whom later turn around to accuse the lecturers of “sorting," “blocking” and/or sexual harassment. And the wider society agrees. ALL lecturers become branded.
When the universities decided to introduce screening examinations, otherwise known as PUME (Post UME exams) to ensure that those admitted are truly worthy of the admission, the Nigerian people, particularly the politicians were up in arms against the exercise, so that the hiring of mercenaries to write examinations for the very academically weak students would continue. Their argument has been that if JAMB would put their acts together and ensure that no cheating is carried out in the examinations, then there would be no need for PUME. Of course they added the issue of extra cost to the parents, as if they had been really concerned about the welfare of the parents.
WAEC and NECO have done just that; there is mass failure and there is panic and uproar in the land. In the Nation newspaper of Thursday 19th November 2009, Dapo Fafowora put it more clearly in his comment titled “The dismal state of education” where he said inter alia “It is…possible that the poor results reflect the greater determination and success of WAEC in stamping out the existing malpractices in public examinations in Nigeria”. He is correct. We cannot always eat our cake and have it. Fund education properly and poor results will vanish.
My advice therefore to our rulers is that since over the decades starting from the end of the civil war, those who run our affairs have decided that Education of the citizenry is the least of their priorities let us leave things as they are at the moment. It is a waste of resources to conduct a probe, the outcome of which will never see the light of day. The resources to be spent on the probe can be of use to our rulers to give their children the best of education at the best institutions any where on earth. When they come back they may continue in the footstep of their parents to rule over 90% of the population that is illiterate. They will then see how wonderful it will be to govern those who can neither read nor write nor think in the 21st century language of the world which they have acquired at the expense of the rest of the citizenry.
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