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The abysmal poor performance of students who
sat for the last nationwide NECO
examinations clearly point to the magnitude
of decay that our education system has
suffered. The reason for this extremely poor
performance is that the teachers have failed
to prepare the students for the examinations
while the students have been unable to
prepare themselves well. This gap on the
part of the teachers and the students
clearly gives rise to a new source of hope
in examination malpractices as a way out.
Cheating is the easy way out. It is like
addiction to a bad habit. The tools and
processes are readily available. Teachers
and parents now force students to cheat. A
lecturer or a school head fixes how much he
would make each year just from examination
fraud explosion in WAEC, NECO or JAMB. The
invigilators, teachers, police and hired
examination mercenaries all make good money
and profit from the rising ability of
parents and guardians to support their
children and wards to commit examination
fraud. With cheating, students do not need
to work hard. The teachers and students can
go sleeping and keep enough money to sort
out invigilators, teachers and even the
police. This is where we are - stunted and
unproductive.
Nigeria cannot continue to move on as if
tomorrow does not count. In all respects,
the nation is wobbling and drifting to a
point of apparent decay but our leaders
pretend that all is well. While Nigerian
leaders are killing qualitative and
quantitative education at home, they are
send their children to other countries and
paying school fees in foreign currencies to
feed the economies of other nations. Are we
a cursed people that we cannot do our thing
well so that others can imitate us?
This is a scandalous situation that does
nobody any good. If people who did not have
shoes have become presidents and great men
and women, it means that those who are
wearing shoes to school can rule the world.
We have been wondering what will be our
legacy for future generations. The FGN and
the states must sit up and arrest this ugly
trend of failure.
The recent NECO examinations results
released two weeks ago show that my Rivers
State won a gold medal in examination
malpractices. Two years ago, it won bronze
medal in examination fraud, trailing behind
Lagos State, then the king. But Lagos State
Government rose to the occasion and acted
well. Even though NECO is a national
concern, Lagos State immediately went to
work and formed a committee comprising
officials of NECO and the state to check
cheating. The result is that while Lagos has
delisted itself from the red list, Rivers
State has taken centre stage, allowing
students cheat in examinations with
ignominy. While we wait for NECO to put its
house in order, we advise Rivers State
Government to take a cue from Lagos and halt
this destructive trend. This will do the
government and students a lot of good.
In the past we have said that for an economy
to run at the speed the FG wishes, apart
from infrastructure, there must be skilled
and capable manpower base to power ICT,
financial engineering and an intellectual
base that must be competitive on a global
level. That is to say that a Nigerian
manpower product (in medicine, law,
engineering, architecture, etc), must be
ready-made enough to fit into any other
economy, and vice versa. This is what
countries such as India, China, Japan,
Brazil and Mexico have achieved in order to
be regarded as serious contenders or
achievers.
Also, there must be something specific in
manufacture that must be original to
Nigeria, beyond export of raw materials and
crude minerals. The country must be in a
position to process its produce and either
use or sell. Finally, Nigeria must play
effectively in the ICT arena either as
originators or as copycats.
To do that, Nigeria must overhaul its
educational system to make it proactive and
productive. The education system of any
country is measured by the standards of its
public schools not the private ones. The
private school system owes nobody anything,
and can only be complementary.
Efficient educational system is that which
makes functional schools from primary to the
university available and affordable within
acceptable distance within every part of a
given country. The system must make primary
schools available with basic equipment and
teachers. The curriculum must make a child
strong enough to proceed to the college and
handle note-taking and reading unaided.
The college must be strong enough to prepare
a child either for work or further academic
pursuit. At this level, the child should be
exposed to technical, academic or vocational
opportunities so he can excel in any field
of choice.
The tertiary level must be strong in
research so that the Nigerian youth can try
their hands on inventions, test existing
theories and amend existing machine
concepts. This is the kind of educational
system that can carry the kind of dream
Yar'Adua/Jonathan had for Nigeria as
contained in the FS202020. Anything short of
this is making mockery of competitive
education in the 21st century.
At the moment, what we have is a situation
where less than 12% of our children can ever
pass WASC, meaning the ability to pass at
credit level, English Language and
mathematics, together with at least three
other subjects without cheating. The
remaining 88% can simply be regarded as
illiterate. Yet, many in this number (12%)
have no hope of gaining university admission
in Nigeria due to lack of spaces, at a time
when universities in Japan are shutting down
because of lack of enough candidates
available for admission. It is worse to
think that the 12% includes students from
the numerous private schools in the country
and the 120 FG colleges believed to be
“centres of excellence” In the last days of
the Obasanjo administration, Nigeria began
to wake up to the truth, when the fiery
transparency tigress, Oby Ezekwesili,
brought her savvy approaches to Education as
Minister by unveiling and exposing the rot,
and by offering policy suggestions. Every
rot has beneficiaries so those who loved the
status quo to remain, fought her until she
left; they utilized the transition lull and
the dithering in the new era to kill the
hope of an educational reform.
When policy does not agree with activity, it
is riotous and counter-productive. A good
example is the policy for computer and ICT
education being introduced in Rivers State.
Good as the decision to introduce computer
education, internet, e-classrooms, etc, in
the state is, the problem would be that such
a system must start from the tertiary to the
primary and not the reverse.
In a country where pupils sit on the ground,
where classrooms are unprotected, where
power is elusive and erratic, it would beat
imagination how ICT including use of
computer notebooks for all, internet, etc,
can work at the primary school level in all
parts of a violence-ravaged state or in any
other part of Nigeria for that matter.
The major problem in Nigeria's educational
system is the collapse of dedication to duty
and motivation to tasks. Time was when
pupils dressed in rags and trekked distances
to school, teachers were poor and few, but
the products are the strong men we have
today. Now that teachers are paid like any
other set of civil servants, pupils even
ride cars to school, it has become difficult
to find good products. This is the riddle
the Jonathan.
The FG must intervene because as long as
there are lecturers ready to sell grades,
there must be students to buy. This is
because brilliant students hate to be
overtaken or equaled by those who bought
grades. So, they too go out to buy in order
to get ahead, and the rat race begins and
grows into a vicious circle.
In a situation where less than 10% of those
who sought university admission ever stand a
chance of getting it, brilliant students
would be forced to also cheat. This is where
we are today, and this is what the kind of
foundation we have to begin the push for the
FS202020.
This is where the repair of the educational
vehicle must begin, and this is where the
journey to FS202020 must begin. Despite my
sympathy and regards for Mr President, I
often have wondered the source of his
confidence in seeking the actualization of
FS202020 dream. What I see on ground in
Nigeria is a complete state of hopelessness
as Nigerians are still too far from telling
themselves the home truth about our
incapacity to take a giant leap even in 2050
if we do not put the fundamentals first.###
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