The issue of examination failure in Nigeria has become a characteristic of
great concern to parents, teachers, stakeholders in education
supervision, and even to the students. This calls for drastic harnessing to
attain international position compared to what obtains in continents like
the United States of America (USA) and Europe. The problems bedeviling
education in Nigeria are either unattended to or haphazardly been looked
into by the authorities. And there are factors concerned with the failure
such as decaying infrastructure, lack of finance, insincerity on the part
of the superintendents of education in the nation, amongst a crowd of other
features.
Home:
The home is supposed to be the stronghold for the development of a child in
term of Informal Education and Formal Education. But it is very appalling
how the home has lost its role in molding the child for a better society.
Many parents would say that they want to build leaders of the future, but
it is however amazing how they cannot allow the children really involve in
studying assiduously.
In many homes today, the child is supported with money to bribe his or her
way in an examination hall to make good result. To this end, the child only
hopes on passing the examination he or she never read and prepared for.
This is the rot, mot, mouse eating into the fabrics of education in Nigeria
culminating into moral and educational decadence. And unless these menaces
at the homefront are headlong tackled, the nearness of putting the
education system right in Nigeria will only be a tall dream.
Teachers:
The axiom that teachers salary is in heaven is no longer obtainable in the
contemporary times. Teachers in the present-days are hardly conscious of
their calling. Many of them even aid the students to malpractice in
examination for lucre. As a result, the teachers lack the confidence in the
teaching profession. They are not aspiring to see the student walk his or
her talk.
Therefore, the Nigerian authorities must put every strategy in place to
curb this hydra-headed monster of malpractice-relationship between the
students and teachers. Nigerians have always said that teachers engage in
the ugly trade of collecting money from students to pass examination due to
poor salary. This issue of poor salary is not the problem, but the
teachers. They are no longer concerned with covering the education
syllables yearly as prescribed by the Ministry of Education, even though
that in international standard, the education curriculum in Nigeria is
overloaded and the ‘chalk and talk’ system in many of the schools is
outdated.
Conversely, computer and its studies should be a national curriculum since
the modern-day students are hardly appealed to reading books; they are
glued to watching television and browsing the phone or laptop. So, it will
make a tremendous success in enhancing education in Nigeria if the studies
go digital than analogue and the curriculum made less tedious.
Education in Nigeria can never make the sun of the day again if the
teachers continue to follow the successive governments that didn’t see
education as a necessary priority, which has given rise to the appearances
of private school racing to fill the vacuum, but to no avail.
The students can make a difference and be impressed with college’s
scholarship scheme. The teachers must represent the government in the
school and make teaching their compulsory priority. They must set a goal of
genuine success for the students and allow constructive criticism from
different quarters and not embark on strike when admonished by those whose
job is to do so. Teachers must translate the ideas in the school
curriculum into their visions and into training the students. There must be
a good teacher-student relationship where discipline will be strong but
soft. This increases the students’ confidence for their teachers training
and the teachers to be aware of the students feeling.
Defining Education:
Except the authorities and the citizens are able to see education beyond
book learning, the tide of education failure in Nigeria will continue to be
prevalent. Thus, all hand must be on deck to inculcate innocence of
childhood for moral and principled values in the society. For example,
respect for elders, community and selves must be paramount. When a child
respects self there will be respect for elders, home and the enlarged
society.
Nigerians as a result should comprehend that education is not based on the
provision of solid infrastructure in schools, but on a
conducive-effective-teaching and learning where people will apply their
education to their lives and not in seclusion degenerating into extensive
and expansive creative people challenging and exposed to their potentials
and international opportunities.
Myth and Reality:
Brainstorming over the ways of stemming the deluge of failure in education
in Nigeria, it is a fact that many Nigerians believe so much in the
unconventional ways of scaling through, like praying and fasting for
education success. Instead of reading, many people resort to divine steps
to reengineering their scholastic fortunes. The negative sideview of this
unconformity approach is that students especially engage in the praying and
fasting exercise in making sure that their teachers do not distract them
when malpracticing in the examination hall.
Books:
The belief that those spearheading education in Nigeria are inept and
insincere and hardly provide the needed books to read perhaps implored the
20.04 per cent of 310,077 candidates, who sat for the Nov/Dec 2010 West
African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) to obtain five
credits in English Language, Mathematics and three other subjects, while
over 70 percent therefore were not qualified to apply for admission into
Nigerian universities and polytechnics. This spate has not abated to this
day. Those in the university are also not spared in this anomaly as
lecturers hardly embark on research but photocopy works of others and sell
same to the students christened handouts.
In Conclusion: Reading Culture:
It was the lack of reading culture and the book to read that has informed
President Goodluck Jonathan’s desire to engage, communicate and learn from
Nigerians through his pet project, “Bring Back The Book” that was
officially launched before the April 2011 elections. For Mr. President,
bringing back the books, and indeed, bringing back Nigerian books, is what
Nigerians desperately need to make their education today count and to
have a firm grip on their future. Nigeria’s dying publishing industry must
also be encouraged for a steady rise of young and talented writers.
Nigerians must know that they have attained a period when illiteracy
wouldn’t be for all, but educational “opportunities” should be. Nigerians
must eschew the promotion of materialism over the promotion of education.
Book culture must be put in place “properly” in the minds of all, for a new
Nigeria that is in dearth of education woes to be certain. The ministry of
education in Nigeria should particularly be literacy friendly.
There should be national funding for the education to enable the
impoverished people to concentrate in their studies instead of combining
schooling with trading. There must be government-run grants-awarding body
to support education and the production of books.
Education opportunity should meet with responsibility where the Ministry of
Education should ensure the success of national reading contests from local
gov
ernment, progress to state competition, and then to regional and the
national, to motivate and encourage schools, local government, state,
region and the national education system.
The spate of crisis in different parts of the country is also of great
concern to many Nigerians in achieving education. The stability of a
people gaining education in a “destabilized” environment is in doubt.
The actual government departments dedicated to ensuring that there is
stemmed failure in education in Nigeria should wake-up because Nigeria
since 50 years has remained one of the countries dealing with poor
education system in the world in spite of all these institutions that we
have always had.
