WAEC Declining Results in Nigeria

WAEC Declining Results in Nigeria There are many reasons many concerned Nigerians have given in response to the continuous poor performance of our children in WAEC examinations despite the improved funding of education by both the federal government and some state governments. Once again many people still finger government inability to invest up to the 26% of the budget as recommended, some also fingered parents nonchalant attitude to their children, a segment also fingered poor teaching methods by the teachers saddled with this responsibility and yet another segment of critique fingered the general assault on education particularly in the North of Nigeria. However, I am yet to hear any one mention the students them selves as a vital part of this problem! Agreed that all mentioned as reason for continuous poor performance in WAEC and other exams in the country have in varying degrees contributed in the poor performance but if you look at it in closer scrutiny you may see that the problem posed by the students them selves may as of now be the most vocal contributor to the challenge we now have at our hands. I have two children now in senior secondary school in fact one of them is about to take same WAEC just seven months or eight months from now but you can’t believe it that the child in question still spend average of eight to ten hours every day excluding times he sleep within the day and night sleeping and doing basic home chores play games on the phone, watching movies, doing internet and its social media links! In fact the only reason he ever stops doing any of those pass times is because I constantly admonish him to go and read his book other wise I am quite sure that he would most probably never remember on his own to take his book and read without coercing! By the time I was at their age in early eighties in my village the things that did distract us most was home chores, radio music not much of TV program since the only station was NTA! To start with there were no home movies like we have now where over three thousands new movies are moved into market every year from Nigeria alone not to mention foreign movies! However, today we have several television stations showing all kinds of programs, movies and new forms of entertainments! We now have pay TVs that would have station show movies from 1.00am to 12 mid night 24/7! To make matters worse the internet is there with al manner of social net works to further make this worse GSM came along too that virtually all the students in secondary school have phone and even some in the primary school have too. In fact in some school where discipline has gone over the board while classes are going on students are either browsing , sending love text messages to one another or playing the numerous games that can easily be downloaded from the internet or even telephone providers! So a typical child day is like this he wakes up in the morning do some house chores, take his bath, eat and go to school if the school is in session. During break period he takes a little time to explore the games in his phone do a little internet chart and social net working. Once school dismisses he starts from school gate to browse the net and play games until he reaches home where he takes his meal and either return to games or glue his eyes to the TV which ever is more appealing and continue so till dinner time and once more return to TV or game till he goes to bed when tired or over powered by sleep! At holiday the only major difference is that instead of going to school all the time is now available for games, internet or television! With all these you can see that the child simply is unable to spare anytime to read especially where the parents are unable to ensure some kind of restrictions. To ensure some kind of restriction is easier said than done to start with. I think personally that experts should have a look at this problem and proffer solution to how we can easily get our children to sit down and read in view of all fun milling around them. I am simply afraid that if some form of solution is not found even if the whole Nigeria budget is allocated to education our children would not fare better than they are doing right now!