BY DAYO ADESULU

PROFESSOR Oyesoji Aremu, Deputy Director, Aca-demics, Distance Learning Centre, University of Ibadan, has called on the Federal Government to without further delay, declare a state of emergency in the education sector. The call is coming on the heels of the mass failure recorded at the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSCE) results recently.

He said: “Given the release of the SSCE results by WAEC, it can again be concluded that the clamour for the declaration of state of emergency in the educational sector is in order.”
According to him, in 2014, the results of SSCE by NECO and WAEC have shown that all is not well with the sector at secondary school level.

A WAEC supervisor during exams

Mid this year, he noted, NECO affirmed that the performances of many candidates fell below the national average of 40.6 per cent which was in itself a poor performance adding: “WAEC’s results of May/June 2014 put the percentage at 31.28, that is 1.6 million candidates that wrote the examinations.”
Aremu who teaches Psychology in the Department of Guidance & Counselling, University of Ibadan  said that a cursory analysis of this shows that just about 500,000 passed five subjects – English Language, Mathematics and three other subjects.
“Prior to this year’s WAEC results, performance has consistently been oscillating between 38.93 per cent in 2011 and 45.52 per cent in 2013.

Poor performance
Although WAEC claimed that 31.28 per cent performance recorded by candidates from Nigeria was the best in West Africa, the fact remains that if that is statistically translated given the ‘strength’ of the country and on the face value, the result would be adjudged as poor,”Aremu said.
He averred that the poor performance would rub off on what would be obtained by a good number of these candidates in higher institutions most especially in universities given the preference of majority of parents and their wards.

He asserted that the implications are rife generally on the Nigerian society, its economy, body polity, social services, health sector and education. “While stakeholders have dissected causes of this among which are: poor attitude to education on the part of the learners, poor funding of the sector, infrastructure decay, unmotivated teaching staff, their inadequacy and politicisation of recruitment of teachers and their competency, not much is being said on remediation.

At this point, it is incumbent on the government at all levels to declare a state of emergency on the sector. More than ever before, the problems confronting the sector should be addressed by all. Nigerian public schools are dead and government policies for addressing this need to be re-appraised given the challenges confronting the sector.

Candidates from private schools
While candidates from the private schools are said to be seemingly doing well, same cannot be said of their counterparts in the public schools.”
Dr Adebowale Adeyemi Suenu on his part said: “The mass failure potrayed the decay in the system. Our students are not studying again. The Nigerian environment is hostile to their  learning.

The security situation in the country does not allow students to study. It has contrained the movement of our students to learning”Speaking further, Suenu stated that students do not have access to learning material adding that some of our students are not even attending school regularly. According to him,  Some of them are now part time secondary students, just as ome of them trade in the morning while some in the afternoon without going to school.

His words: “ Because of the poverty level in the country, some of the students  must first hawk for their parents before going to school. They have no time to learn. On the part of the teachers, they  are no longer committed to their teaching job as some of them have abandoned the core teaching profession for trading in the school. For me, the solution is to restructure the system. The system needs total overhauling.”

“We must know what the  secondary education is meant for, what the primary is meant for and what kind of students we want in the school. The type of country we are building will determine the type of graduates we will have.”

Meanwhile, Professor Comfort Banku-Obi from the University of Calabar UNICAL, in her reaction to the poor result said: “The failure is as a result of students failure to read their books. They rather engage in other non essential things than reading their books.The social media have taking greater percentage of their time. They need to devote more time to dtudying.

Banku-Obi also urged the Federal Government to institute English and Mathematic  laboratories saying it will go a long way to help students do well in their studies and by extention in their examination.