IT was recently reported that less that five percent of those who sat for most recent NECO examination passed at the relevant credit levels. This is a cataclysmic news that should have shaken the very educational foundations of any visionary society that plans for the next generation but surprisingly nobody gave a hoot as there were lots of other issues to discuss and legions of demons to exorcize such as Gaddafi, Jos crisis, the cabals and cabalistic intrigues, even erratic weather and other endless issues that prevent a cogent thought from being given to puzzling problems confronting the next generation as future leaders.

These critical issues however are never the least important, it is only that an articulate society must simultaneously carry along such daily issues without being totally oblivious of the needs and problems of its future leaders. And the mass failure at NECO is one of such monumental national malaise of no mean significance when one thinks of it. The causative factors point to many variables such as low educational budget and a disdain for human resource development and capacity building due to lack of exceptionally gifted technocrats within the public service planners that should help move a nation forward as Japan did. There is also the problem of low teacher morale due to frequent industrial actions, and most importantly the recent influence of English premiership league football that occupies much of the energy and time of these students at all educational levels to the extent that most have lost the most rudimentary art of time management and personally developed time-tables.

A friend who is a university don once told me about a day he held a lecture when an important English premiership match was in progress and the students grudgingly attended and were not happy that he “punished” them with lectures instead of giving them handouts and setting them free to watch the big matches and of course the big noise of that match was emanating too from a nearby student hostel until suddenly a favourite team scored a goal and a big volcanic noise of merry students erupted so loudly that all his students ran out of the class with speed and he had to dodge fast to avoid being trampled by these modern Roman barbarians. So, these are our future generation of doctors, lawyers, lawmakers, engineers, accountants?

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