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Education
Why Candidates Perform Poorly
By:Michael Daniels M.K. Okoronkwo
Beside student’s inadequate preparation for WAEC, poor communication and quantitative skill, inability to understand exam questions, poor grammatical structures and illegible handwriting among others which Chief Nnaemeka Olisah, acting Chairman of Nigeria Exam Council (NEC) highlighted as the reason students fail WAEC, I want to state convincingly that what leads to the poor preparation which is one umbrella that covers the rest of the short comings of students in doing well in WAEC is the lethal economy of the country and mal-administration by the powers that be. About 90% of Nigerian candidates are willing to enter into WAEC’s Guinness book of record under favorable economy and positive thinking and working government.
What Do I mean? The majority of the so-called (WAEC) candidates who enter (into the exam) rushed to the exam hall from their respective businesses—market, tailoring shop, hair dressing and barbing salon, street marketing ,carpentry, mason, etc, the business from which they eke out a living. I may not yet be understood .That most candidates even the undergraduates do not study again, is a common knowledge, but something prompted to it. Three quarter of students are self-sponsored or contribute about 70% of their educational outgoings. And to make sure they pay school fees, buy books they could afford, have clothing to put on and gari to sieve at the end of the day, they stop school for days or weeks and abandoned their books for the money. Even after work, due to much stress during the business hour, they could not read their books but sleep off and wake up the next morning to continue the daily routine. It is during exam you may see them flipping over the pages of their class notes and try helplessly to gather what the lecturer had taught—you can see that many of them don’t have text books and some who have do not have a reading atmosphere. There is a friend of mine, by September he would be graduating out of the university. But it is unfortunate to say, his bookshelf could not boast of 20 text books, his handouts and pamphlet inclusive; there is nothing foreign to his lecturer’s course text books. It is not his fault! He is the all and all as far as his education is concern. Beside being a student, he is also a tailor. You may know what it means: one leg in the school and the other on the sewing machine: he has little or no time to read.
With the finger, you can easily count those students in Nigeria who cares for nothing else except for day to break for them to go to school. How their school fees are paid is what they don’t know except that they receive a phone call telling them that their school fees have been paid, and at most they should go to the school bursar and collect their receipt? At home, they have standby home library and attending angels where they retire to for research and who take care of their domestic cores, respectively. Their own biz is to read.
No doubt, with the former, reading is with a divergent mind. Worries of what to eat after or how to put other things together stealthily steal away their concentration and understanding power and leave them only with gazing over their book(s) and entering the exam hall in impromptu. This is exactly the route of the malaise we see in the educational sector among students. Simply, the sky rocketing of examination impasse we see in school exams today is traceable to economically ill-equipped of Nigerians. With a harmonized and even distributed national economy, education will be ripped of this menace that is predominant in WAEC and tertiary institutions.
Another major threat to student’s success (in WAEC and other exams or to the entire education in Nigeria) is power failure. The harm this sector has caused to education is unfathomable. A Bible injunction says (I paraphrase) Saul has killed one thousand and David ten thousand. And another verse says “…what the palmerworm had left, the locust had eaten. (Joel, 1: 4) This is exactly what the power sector had done to education; the little percentage of education Nigerian bad economy had spared, has been voraciously gulped by looming darkness imposed upon by PHCN. Student’s and people’s morale to read is completely butchered by the inability of the PHCN to give light or the government’s ineptitude to empower and monitor the power sector to do its job. You can see that in the night, the last hope of average Nigerians including the students to read and prepare themselves for exam, there’ll be no electric light. It is common to know that anytime it happens like this, the (WAEC) candidates would enter examination hall with no information upstairs but with foreign materials and machinery by the side.
However, to address this problem the government has a pivotal role to play among which are: devising an economic policy that will be implemented from the grass root and which will place every Nigerian above poverty and survival level but at least on success level if putting them on the platform of significance is not yet in sight (but every Nigerian deserves to be significant in the polity of the nation). Something better than poverty alleviation programme should be put in place until the above mentioned programme should be transformed and be shifted from the literature and government’s offices, pages of newspapers and radio tapes where they are fully executed to the door post of the poor masses. The government can consider placing every Nigerian child on a monthly salary at any reasonable amount determined by the National Assembly; true free education up to tertiary level and, establishment and maintenance of functional libraries at every five minutes drive in the streets just as fast food centers (Mr. Biggs) and beer parlours and casinos are. In addition to the above, since the knowledge conveyed by ICT or its current position in the revolutionary world is a public knowledge, the government should make it a basic facility to every school—primary schools included. It is a high time to change the mentality of regarding computer/laptop as a device for the fortunate schools or which a Governor or government official donates to selected institutions to boost his ego.
I’ m always glad when I read in the pages of newspapers that a person or a body donates educative materials to a school or awards scholarship to students. Yes our representatives in the various levels of Government should embark individually, on meaningful programmes that encourage education of the citizenry especially the less privileged ones. Many people are out of school because they have no sponsor(s) while many who are in school are struggling to make two ends meet.
When I mean meaningful academic support, I mean taking the bull by the horn. One time I went home, I asked my people what someone representing us in the State House of assembly had been doing for us, a student told me that he has been trying. “In what aspect?” I asked. Then she quickly told me that he shared exercise books to students. “Exercise books?” I asked again in confusion. How many of the exercise books per student?” To save space she told me each student inherited two. Anyway, the representative made an attempt: but what have two exercise books to do for a student that needs at least ten? Truthfully, the two exercise books do not solve the student’s need for exercise books in particular. It remains the burden of the parents or guardians to provide the required writing materials for the pupil. Students have basic needs which could be a big problem for their parents or guardians to cater. The government and concerned body donors should tackle such basic needs and which are priority to the students. You can think of school and examination fees, accommodation fees, and standard text books and if possible “pocket money” feeding allowance etc. The aged parents and guardians could provide the exercise books and biros and pencils and other paraphernalia that do not require much money.
And in terms of electricity which is the second largest canker worm to students’ academic success if it (light) is not available, and when available, a catalyst and impetus for good performance, the government must make sure that there is constant power supply. Both in schools and at home—without electric light, every electronic gadget given to the schools is a waste. In fact, the government should tender zero tolerance to anybody that diverts money meant for power supply to something else. Base on this, I call for the present government relentless action in probing the US $16 billion power project of the last regime and which after eight years still keep us in darkness. And my prayer is, may the people involved in the award of the contracts never be treated with executive clemency when found guilty but brought to face the law like the common man because they are the enemies of our nation.
However, in summery, the onus is upon the government to create a befitting environment for the students to perform excellently educationally.
N/B:(This article was commenced on the scaffold of a five-story building in the day time and completed in the night with a candle light yet, by a candidate preparing for JAMB).
WAEC SHOULD APOLOGISE IGBO CANDIDATES By: Michael Daniels
Currently, one of the things that is attracting worldwide attention is the promotion of indigenous languages. To this effect, the world has mapped out a day in the year to celebrate mother tongue.
And I believe it is to make our children to be acquainted with our national indigenous languages that made the school authorities to co-opt the three major languages: Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba, spoken in the country as part of the school curricular even to be taught from basic education. But it is unfortunate that equal respect has not been accorded to the national languages compared with other subjects. As a result, people have been looking down on them and couldn't offer any of them. Some even deride those that choose them as a discipline.
My experience in the last Nov/Dec WASSCE or how the candidates that offered the national languages in the exam were treated is what bubbles up this writing. The candidates were not properly informed that their center for the very subjects was changed until very late in the day that day. Very early in the morning, before 8'o clock A.M, we had arrived at our proper center for the on-going exam and for the national languages in particular, and yet met the entrance to the hall pad locked. Thinking we came too early, or that the papers were afternoon papers we relaxed at the environ waiting for when it would be opened. After some hours, one of the school coordinators came and told us there was no exam in the school that day. When we insisted we had Igbo language and other national languages, he promised to find out where the center was. After some times he returned told us where the new center was; from there we took bike and raced to the place (about 20 minutes ride). On our arrival, other candidates have gone half way into the examination. Nevertheless, we were shared and informed that we had only 30 minutes to go for the main paper.
Honestly, after the thirty minutes, the answer sheets were collected back from us by the examiner. But it took some candidates spent the whole of the exam period to locate the new venue: they got to the place when the exam had been stopped and the papers submitted. Many of them encouraged themselves with the facts they had made credit for the indigenous languages in their first sittings. However, I so much had pity on one Segun that was offering Yoruba and who came into the entire exam because of the very subject having cleared other papers in his first sitting and yet could not be granted admission into the university for not procuring credit in Yoruba language (according to him) who was also one of the victims of the shenanigans.
As a confirmation to the ill-treatment meted on us in the day we were taking the national languages, by not informing us in time about the change of the venue, our result sheets are being stained with F9 in the column of the national languages. Hence, I would want WAEC to tender apology to every Igbo candidate and to our Yoruba and Hausa counterparts who receive the same shock and stain, using the candidates from this center 5331503 in Port Harcourt as a point of contact.
Also I would like to advise the National Examination Council (NEC) and
WAEC in general to apply seriousness in handling the indigenous languages in school both in class and in exam. At the same time, I want to extend my advice to our respective governments: they should be providing instant job to those that offer them as a discipline for these measures remain the best way to instill them in our children and encourage them to admire and speak them. Remember a nation without a language is one heading to extinction. Notwithstanding, I want to use the same chance to ask WAEC to release all our results they are still putting outstanding.
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, Jul 13 2008, 1:08 AM EDT
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