Charles Eguridu is angry with the Nigerian media. The head of West African Examinations Council (WAEC) national office is worried that the media distorted his message on the release of the May/June result of the West African Senior Schools Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
Eguridu would have wanted the media to celebrate the number of successful candidates in the exams. However, the news merchants have learnt from experience that bad news sells their wares faster. So they opted to celebrate the failure.
The headlines after Eguridu’s encounter with newsmen were all about the mass failure in the May/June exams. The percentage of candidates who made the mandatory five credits including Mathematics and English had dropped to 31.3 per cent. By Nigerian education standard, almost 69 per cent of the candidates failed the exams.
Ironically it was Eguridu himself who inadvertently led the news men in the direction of the perceived mass failure. Though he argued recently that the mass failure story was a media creation, he particularly highlighted what obviously was a weak spot in the result.
In his briefing, he noted the decline in the number of candidates who scored five credits with mathematics and English. Even WAEC’s result statistics for WASSCE 2014 summary graded the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on that same yardstick. The summary shows Anambra state leading with 65.92 per cent of its 51, 718 candidates hitting the legendary target, while Yobe state came last with only 4.85 per cent of its 15, 318 candidates making five credits with Mathematics and English.
The 2014 WASSCE result is bad news. A nation whose secondary school graduates exhibit such appalling level of calculus friendliness has only laid a solid foundation for technological backwardness. But the architects of Nigeria’s education system are not helping matters either. The system discriminates against anyone who falls short of the basic requirement for university admission.
The tension mounting in the civil service over the B.Sc./HND dichotomy, which has successfully frustrated very brilliant minds out of the system, is grounded on what formed the basis of Eguridu’s assessment of the performance of candidates in WASSCE.
Apparently embarrassed by the picture of mass failure, Eguridu rose to a spirited defence of WAEC by blaming the media, rather than the nation’s skewed education system. The performance of candidates who made seven or more credits without Mathematics and English was crowded out by the media hype.
The scenario is a sad reminder of the fate of a very brilliant JS-3 student in Meiran Model College, Lagos, some years ago.
The boy, whose parents were peasants, passed seven subjects including the sciences at credit and distinction level, but failed Mathematics and English. The policy of Lagos state government at that time prohibited the promotion of any JS-3 candidate who failed the two subjects, to SS-1.
The student was consequently expelled. His teachers went on their knees begging the principal to rescind the decision. The principal was sympathetic, but no one in the state Ministry of Education, would listen to the principal’s plea. The boy lost. The teachers watched in tears as he headed into a stormy future and possibly the hostile world of organized crime.
The architects of Nigeria’s education system foisted on the country a caste system where one must obtain a university education or be treated as a failure. The reward for university education is immeasurable. Technical education is regarded as a dumping ground for dunces. The reward for it is punitively deprecating.
Nigeria’s education system has no room for artisans. Consequently, artisans from Togo and Ghana now fill the void. Pat Utomi once argued rather derisively that when he enters someone’s house, he takes a critical look at the tiles on the floor. If they are well laid, he concludes that they were laid by a Togolese. His argument is that Nigeria lacks skilled artisans.
That unfortunate situation is foisted on us by a system that regards anyone without university education as a dunce. A skewed reward system and the deprecating assessment of technical education are at the root of the alarming unemployment in the land.
The education system churns out unemployable job-seekers with glowing array of certificates without commensurate skill.
The architects of the education system are aware of the damage foisted on the economy by a system that places artificial ceiling over the heads of talented minds who naturally would know no limits in their chosen career. Eguridu said the anomaly was being tackled. WAEC would soon be conducting WASSCE in 29 additional subjects including GSM repairs.
That is good news. But our experience with the 6-3-3-4 education system suggests that it would be premature to celebrate Eguridu’s announcement.
The federal government lacks the will power to prosecute technical education to a logical conclusion. Most of the equipment imported in the 1980s for the prosecution of the technical arm of the 6-3-3-4 education system were left to rot away in their crates. The dichotomy that treats teachers with technical skills as dunces discouraged people from acquiring such skills. Few could impart the knowledge. We must fashion out a reward system where anyone with four years of tertiary education rises to the peak of the public service.
