BY DAYO ADESULU

Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Education, Honourable Aminu Suleiman while using the results of WASC and NECO candidates in recent past as yardstick for evaluating quality of education in Nigeria lamented that less than 10 per cent of the candidates have obtained minimum of five credits including English and Mathematics.

He made this remark while delivering his goodwill message at NECO stakeholders’ forum for South-West held in Lagos. He said; “We are here today to appraise and chart the course that will take us to our desired destination. This can only be done by laying a proper foundation for the rapid, efficient and sustainable development of the sector to consolidate the posterity of our dear nation and revive our legacy as the giant of Africa.”

According to Suleiman, constant review of Nigeria’s examination curriculum should be patterned to reflect desired policy strategy of the educational sector for vision 20:2020 to be translated from mere wish to reality. Suleiman who urged stakeholders in the sector to emulate the Pre-Sputnik classroom environment in America, stated that we can learn from what they did to salvage a looming deplorable educational system.

He explained that record has it that their learning classroom environment was appalling, substandard, the morale of teachers were very low while the teaching of sciences and Mathematics were in deplorable state. He added that the launch of Sputnik, a Russian artificial satellite in 1957 and Vostor in 1961, by Russia, made America to discover how irrelevant her educational system was to the overall societal goal.

File Photo: Cross section of House of Representatives members at the National Assembly in Abuja Photo : Gbemiga Olamikan

He pointed out that America saw an urgent need for a curriculum innovation that would be more relevant to the varying needs of the learners and the society. One of the major objectives of the curriculum, he noted, underscored the significance of strengthening schools in skills acquisition and life application in science and Mathematics starting from Kindergarten to tertiary institution.

He said; “I have observed with dismay, contradictory policy measures exhibited in the educational sector, such is the mixed reactions that trailed the scrapping or merging of some government agencies which NECO is part of. The resolution, according to the Presidential Committee on the rationalisation and restructuring of Government agencies was mainly to prune down the over-bloated government bureaucracy and save over N280 billion between 2012 and 2015.

Suleiman, however, stated that apart from the attendant confusion the decision to scrap NECO created, it could not be phased out by mere fiat because NECO was established by an Act of Parliament into the system and only a repeal of the act could pave the way for the new plan. “Instead of Federal Government scrapping it, efforts should be intensified by the government and other stakeholders to reposition the Council for optimum performance,” he said.

As partners in nation-building, he reiterated the commitment of the National Assembly to engage all legislative instruments to ensure quality is restored in the sector and also position NECO to enable it discharge its mandate in the most enabling environment.

Also speaking, the Chairman, Governing Council of the West African Examination Council (WAEC), Professor Pius Obanya, a discussant at the stakeholders’ seven-day retreat said examination, as obtained in  Nigeria, must be restructured to achieve the desired objectives.

The don  stated that examination in Nigeria must be tailored to enrich the education system by identifying areas of challenges and seek ways of proferring solution to them. He lamented the situation where Nigerians tend to lay too much emphasis on certificates without ensuring that the necessary steps and processes that should give birth to these certificates are put in place.

His words; “It is a good thing to strive to have a certificate after going through any level of education, but the emphasis in today’s world is no longer on certificates but on personal qualities. We must work toward de-emphasising this craze for certificate acquisition by re-inventing the system and enriching our curriculum. Examination failure must be seen as the failure of the system which, therefore, means that we must go back to the basics to trace where the problems came from.”

On his part, the Vice-Chancellor, Sokoto State University, Prof. Nuhu Yaqub, who delivered a paper titled: Repositioning NECO for more Effective Service Delivery: A Collective Task, said that Nigeria’s education standards could improve if all stakeholders determine to make it work. He said that there must be moral revolution that would not spare anyone found guilty of compromising national aspirations.