By SYLVESTER ONOJA

THE May/June 2011 West African Senior Secondary School certificate Examination result released by WAEC shows the grave state of our secondary education. According to Dr. Iyi Uwaedia, head of WAEC National Office, only 30.9% of the 1,540,250 candidates made five credits and above, including English and Mathematics.

By implication 69.1% of these candidates do not qualify into tertiary institutions.  This is a true reflection of the tragedy that stares at us in the face of obvious lapses in the system.

For too long, the secondary sector of our education system has been left to function at the whims and caprices of individuals, organisations and states. The sector continues to expand with no defined regulatory body.  It is common knowledge that the continuous numerical growth of secondary schools in Nigeria is astronomical.

Every nook and cranny of this nation has witnessed a surge in the proliferation of so-called secondary schools with no single body calling the shot.

The trend shows a pattern of continuous expansion of senior secondary schools which by implication entails students’ increase, whose interest must be properly catered for.

The secondary school population in Nigeria has been reported to be about 30.2 million in 2006/2007 academic session.  By projection, the figure cannot be less than 32 million for 2010/2011 academic sessio(ThisDay Newspapers August 4, 2011) This very large cross section of Nigerian children along with the huge number of human, materials and financial resources required to take care of their growth and coordinate their activities deserve a statutory regulatory body which has never been so in the history of Nigeria.

The continuous rise in the growth of private nursery and primary schools are positive indicators of the emergence of new secondary schools which will eventually apply for inclusion of secondary school curriculum in their educational outfit.

As this sector continues to expand with no defined regulatory body, the consequences of this are epitomized in the astronomical decline in the standard of secondary education!

Secondary school education remains the most marginalised sector of the education system in Nigeria.  It is very unfortunate for the Professor Pai Obanya-led Presidential Committee on Education to Advocate Federal Government disengagement from providing secondary education for the state and local governments when the same Federal Government has UBEC to cater for basic education sector, NUC for the university education, NCCE for college of education, NBTE for monotechnices and polytechnics.

Secondary education no doubt deserves parenthood. The contemplation and recommendation for a merger of senior secondary education into the Universal Basic Education commission as an alternative has its problems considering the huge population of pupils, human and materials resources as well as the large number of schools expected to be built and maintained on a continuous basis.

It is very pertinent to mention that UBEC came into existence under the purview of international policies and programmes such as education for all (EFA) by 2015, (MDGS 1,2,& 3) etc. It is therefore inappropriate and defeatist to transfer the problems of secondary education completely into primary education just because they have similar objectives.

If tertiary education can have as much as three parent bodies to manage them, primary and secondary education should at least have a separate body each to regulate and control it.

It is also important to remind us that government at all levels in this country are still contending with one of the most important provisions of the UBE Act which is to make the basic education programmes universal, free and compulsory. UBEC therefore has an enormous responsibility of making all efforts to counter the factors that were impediments to the global realisation of the previous programme, UPE and then the current, UBE.

The only available form of intervention by the Federal Government to public secondary schools – ETF project, has now been stopped. No public secondary school will now benefit from ETF intervention.  Sad enough, no substitute or alternative has been pronounced to shore up the derelicts we call secondary school buildings across the nation. It is worrisome and unfortunate that secondary education will no longer benefit from this gesture.

It is a known fact that various efforts by the states to prop their secondary education, have not been very meaningful, consistent or well coordinated.  Secondary education and its myriad essential inputs of adequate staffing, training and retraining programmes, curriculum demand and implementations as well as structural and physical facilities requirements are big enough to constitute an entire commission.

The wave of increase in secondary school age students and the corresponding consistent increases in the number of schools call for concerted efforts to meaningfully charge a body with the great task of management.  Nigeria education data profile has it that the percentage of youths ages 12 – 17 attending secondary school increased notably and consistently from 1990 to 2008 with 44% being in school in 2008, compared with 35% of youths in 2003 and only 24% in 1990.

The post-basic education sector – Senior Secondary School- no doubt occupies a very critical and enviable place in Nigeria’s educational system in the sense that it is designed to prepare the students for entry into the tertiary level and as well groom those that cannot go further for the labour market.

To meet these challenges, the sector should not be left as an orphan but be given to a responsible body that will manage and direct, control personnel, structure and the learning and teaching that have long eluded the sector.

The Obayan committee report suggesting a merger of the basic education with secondary education will not only compound the enormous challenges of this sector but aggravate the already deteriorated and pitiable state of the secondary school system in Nigeria.

The damages caused by absence of a regulatory body cannot be best solved through a merger.

The recommendation that the schools (Unity Colleges) be scrapped and two be established in each Geo-political Zone of the country and FCT can best be described as running away from confronting the real challenges of secondary education.  This aspect of the report should be discarded in favour of an independent body to regulate and manage the secondary sector. Basic Education should continue to function with structural adjustment under the existing body.

Again Professor Pai Obanya’s observation that there are too many parastatals that are very unwieldy and that rather than creating a new one, efforts should only be made to make existing ones wieldy should not affect the secondary Education sector that  has suffered a very serious setback.

This  recommendation is unfortunate and  cannot solve the monumental challenges of the sector.  The problems engulfing Secondary Education in Nigeria are too enormous to be handled under an already overburdened entity of the Universal  Basic Education Commission.

The sorry state of Secondary Education was recently highlighted by the Federal Ministry of Education ministerial Committee that blamed corruption and ineptitude of some Federal Unity colleges across the country. The visit of the Honourable  Minister of State , Nyesong Wike  to Federal Government College Garki  Abuja and his reaction to the deplorable state of the Institution are factors that speak for the establishment of a new body.

Federal Ministry of Education is saddled with enough constitutional responsibilities just as the current UBEC has enough challenges to address.

The May/June 2011 WAEC result has only drawn our attention to the cataclysmic nature of damage to Nigeria vision of 2020  if urgent steps are not taken to address the distressing state of secondary education in Nigeria. It is interesting to know that  as far back as 1999 an act of Government created “Secondary School Commission”.

The frequent changes at the helm of affairs of our Education have been a major setback to the take off of the commission. Between independence to date, Nigeria has had forty-seven Ministers of Education. For goodness sake, a good policy , enacted should be allowed to bail out the future of  Nigerian’s children before being subjected to changes by frequent changes in the leadership of the Ministry.

As a matter of act the Ministry of Education has perpetually suffered from what could be described as ‘memory death’ which is responsible for jettisoning approved polices on ground.

Secondary Education is the sector that has been victim of employment embargo in virtually all the states of the Federation and at the National level for a long time now.  We all know that secondary school enrolment continues to grow with fewer hands to manage the sector.

Retirement by the aged continues with no equitable replacement in the system. Government must redirect huge sum of Money expended on non professional teaching staff for the much needed recruitment and retention of qualified and competent teachers.

There is no dispute as to the need for a reform in this sector.  Several committees have spoken.  The time has come when a body – the much talked about Secondary Education Commission which already had an Act (NSCE 199) of 1999 be put in place to regulate and control all activities at this level of Education.

The unwieldy approach to the provision of secondary education must stop if Nigeria is to realize objectives of the vision 2020

It is on record that out of the Federal Ministry of Education headquarters’ capital budget of N24.2 billion between 2000 and 2006 over N18.7 billion was appropriated for the 102 Unity schools which account for only about 2% of the population of the students in the country and 80% of the total staff of the ministry.

The outcome in terms of students’ performance in the last May/June WAEC examination  is said to be unsatisfactory going by the fact that 85% of the students could not make the requirement for higher Education in WAEC Exams, even when 80% of the total budget was invested in that section

The Federal Government needs to be commended for her interventionary roles in the Basic and Tertiary Education Levels. However, the situation on the field calls for greater attention to the Secondary Education sector.

It is worth noting that the JSS 1-3 of 2005 form part of those that  graduated from the SSS in 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively with dismal performances. This is a clear indication of garbage in garbage out, considering the sorrowful state of the Secondary Schools across the nation. The implication is that all segments of the Secondary Education sector should be under a centralized Education Body (SECONDARY EDUCATION COMMISSION)

Federal Government must equally bring its might to secondary education sector through massive intervention in the provision of classrooms, teaching and learning facilities and professional salary for the retention of capable hands in the classroom.

The Federal Government is strongly enjoined to come to the aid of the states through massive recruitment of qualified and competent teachers that can be best achieved through the secondary school commission in order to salvage the dearth of teachers in secondary schools which largely accounts for the yearly dismal performance of our students in WASSCE/SSCE/NABTEB  in the country.

Federal Government’s political will and genuine intervention through the establishment of a vibrant secondary schools commission is the only apparent solution that can redeem the orphan status of secondary education in Nigeria.

Chief Onoja is the Kogi State Commissioner for Education and Chairman of the Ministerial Panel for Federal Unity Schools in Nigeria.