Feb 17 2016

SCHOOL WHERE STUDENTS USE UMBRELLAS IN CLASS!

NSUKKA—The people of Aji community in Enugu-Ezike, Igboeze North Local Government Area of Enugu State, are grumbling over the poor condition of their community secondary school buildings. The Aji High School, which was built through communal effort in the 70s, is in ruins as all the six buildings in the compound are dilapidated and not conducive for learning.

At the time South East Voice visited the school Tuesday morning, most of the building’s roofs were damaged, even as the members of the Parents Teachers Association, PTA, were meeting on how to find solutions to the issue. Enugu State government awarded a N3.6 billion contract for the renovation of over 400 primary and secondary schools in the state during the administration of Sullivan Chime, but the job was said to have been abandoned, leading to a quarrel between the then House of Assembly, led by Eugene Odo, and Chime.

A school teacher, who spoke to South East Voice in the school on condition of anonymity, said the situation had improved as the things were very terrible during the rainy season. The teacher said: “During the rainy season, most of the students used umbrellas even in the classrooms as there was no difference between those outside and those inside the classrooms.

“Before the current dry season, the students usually pushed their lockers to a corner each time schools closed so that their text books would not be destroyed by rains before the next day. “The PTA has been trying its best by over-taxing its members for renovation work on most of the buildings, but their effort is like putting new wine in old wine skin because the corrugated iron sheets used for the roofing are old and any little breeze would pull them off.

“The state government should come to our aid because the school belongs to it. The community built it and gave same to the government.” Apart from the classroom blocks which were in ruins, other blocks housing the various laboratories, introduction to technology, library and computer rooms were equally not habitable.

Vanguard News

Jan 26 2015

FEMI FANI-KAYODE FOUND TO BE MASTER FORGER!…HOW COME GEJ IS SURROUNDED BY SO MANY FAKE PEOPLE?

The Presidential Campaign Organization Director of Media, Femi Fani-Kayode has been accused of “forging an email” in a bid to discredit Muhammadu Buhari’s statement of result.

Last week, we published a story stating that the University of Cambridge had verified that Hausa was one of the examinations offered during the 1961 WASC. It will be remembered that the dispute on whether the subject was offered or not was one of the most controversial ones surrounding Buhari’s credentials.

Today, Suraj Oyewale, a Chartered Accountant/blogger has accused Fani-Kayode of altering an email from Cambridge Assessment on the issue and sent false information to media houses in a bid to convince the electorate that Hausa Language was not an examination paper in 1961.

Oyewale said: “I was on my way to work on the morning of Monday, January 26, 2015, when my friend, Sodiq Alabi, sent me a Facebook message asking me how to contact THISDAY newspapers since I am more familiar with newspaper houses as a regular contributor to issues in national dailies.”

“Sodiq included in the message a web link to an article in THISDAY newspaper with the title, “Cambridge University: Hausa Language Not Offered in 1961 Exams”. I opened the article to see these lines: The controversy over the secondary school results of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, continues as the University of Cambridge has said that Hausa Language, which is one of the subjects listed by Buhari, was not offered in its examinations in 1961.

The disclosure was contained a statement from the office of the Director of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation claiming it came though an e-mail dated Thursday, January 22, 2015 from the institution’s Archives Delivery Service Officer, Jacky Emerson, to one SODIQ ALABI who requested for confirmation if the examination body offered Hausa Language in the 1961 West African Certificate Examination it organised.

Emerson, in his one-sentence reply, said: “According to the Regulations for 1961, African Language papers, including those for Hausa, WERE NOT included for West African School Certificate.” This development may have further cast doubts on the certificate which is purported to be General Buhari’s. He is yet to react to the assertion by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Organisation that the document (the published certificate) was forged and illegally procured.”

Oyewale stated that Sodiq was so jarred by the lies attributed to his name by Fani-Kayode and he was going to contact the THISDAY editor for “such wicked misrepresentation”:

“Sodiq Alabi (sodiqalabi@hotmail.com) had written an email to Cambridge Assessment, the brand name of University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicates, on January 22, 2015, 13.31 hours, to confirm whether Hausa was truly offered by it in 1961 examinations.

“By 4.10pm same day, Jacky Emerson (archives@cambridgeassessment.org.uk), Archive Services Delivery officer of Cambridge Assessment, replied thus: ‘Dear Sodiq Alabi, According to the Regulations of 1961, African Language papers, WERE SET for West Africa School Certificate’.

“A screenshot of this email exchange was shared to us on Facebook by Sodiq and it went viral on the Internet. The email triggered other Nigerians to send emails to Cambridge Assessment for independent confirmation and the school came out with a release on its website the next day.

“In the release titled, ‘Statement in response to Nigerian Presidential election enquiries’, the school stated: ‘The organisation also confirmed that according to the Regulations for 1961, African Language papers, including those for Hausa WERE SET for the West African School Certificate.

Here is the link to the Cambridge Assessment website where this confirmation was published: http://cambridgeassessment.org.uk/n…-to-nigerian-presidential-election-enquiries/

“It is however surprising that Femi Fani-Kayode went ahead to alter the content of Sodiq’s email in his press statement to, ‘According to the Regulations for 1961, African Language papers, including those for Hausa, WERE NOT included for West African School Certificate’ and still quoted the email as the source. “It is very unfortunate that this is the man speaking for the president’s re-election campaign. How do we believe every other “fact” he has quoted has not been altered as well? It is a shame.

“It is also very unfortunate that our newspapers have gone to sleep and investigative journalism is at its lowest ebb in Nigeria. How will Femi Fani-Kayode not be feeding newspaper reporters with lies when he knows how lazy some of our journalists have become? This is not an advertorial that does not require independent confirmation; all THISDAY and Daily Post that reported this Fani-Kayode’s glaring lie need to do is to seek out Sodiq or confirm from Cambridge – which had posted a confirmation statement on conduct of Hausa language in 1961 WASC on its website since January 23, two days before Fani-Kayode came up with this lie – and ask for their side of the story.

“It is particularly curious that I had, in an earlier article sent to THISDAY which was published in its January 25 edition, attached a screenshot of the email from Sodiq to buttress some other arguments. So THISDAY editors, at least their OP-ED editor, could not have claimed not to have seen the original content of Sodiq’s email before Fani-Kayode’s alteration.

“This is not the first time President Jonathan’s men are forging or altering documents to demonize anyone perceived as the president’s ‘enemy’. His new media assistant, Reno Omokri, was also busted in February last year, when he hid under a pseudonym, Wendel Simlin, to send false but damaging reports to newspapers to demonize the then just suspended Governor Lamido Sanusi of Central Bank. A dig into the source of the computer used in typing the document showed it was a certain Reno Omokri that authored it! How lowly can people get? Efforts to get Fani-Kayode’s response to the allegation had yielded no result at the time of going to press, as calls to his phone were neither answered nor returned. He also did not reply a text message to his phone.

Source: #TheCable

Sep 30 2014

NIGERIAN YOUTH RANK ENTERTAINMENT,SPORTS,”HAND-HELD”,RELIGION AND EDUCATION IN THAT ORDER ON THEIR MINDS!

NIGERIAN YOUTH RANK ENTERTAINMENT,SPORTS,RELIGION AND EDUCATION IN THAT ORDER IN THEIR MINDS!

“DON’T CRY FOR ME, WAEC” BY ’SOLA FAGORUSI

The West African Senior School Certificate Examination, organised by the West Africa Examination Council, is the principal final examination for secondary school pupils in Nigeria. Just as the results in the last three years have been everything but satisfactory, the results of the 2014 May/June examination have left stakeholders deeply troubled.

Like every other institution in the country facing its worst moment, it seems that the education sector has not been spared. Out of 1,692,435,000 candidates that sat for the exam, only 31.2 per cent managed to obtain a credit pass in five subjects, including Mathematics and English.

In 2013, only 36.57 per cent of the candidates managed to cross the bar, a further dip compared to 2012 that had 38.81 per cent of students passing the exam using similar yardstick.

The National Examination Council, which is Nigeria’s second most popular terminal examination convener for Senior Secondary School students, also keeps watching as the downward spiral continues. Considering the gradual decline in the pass rate from 92 per cent in 2011 to 68 per cent in 2012 and 52 per cent in 2013, the days ahead may spell doom for the education sector.

The learning environment in Nigeria has been altered. Schools are not what they used to be and schoolchildren seem to have more things competing for their time now than ever before. Television houses no longer resume at 4pm, as was the practice about a decade and half ago. Nowadays, TV broadcasting is a 24-hour affair. Parents also no longer have to yell to students to turn off the television and go to bed. Instead, teenagers are required to switch off their cell phones and do the needful – read or get on some other important tasks.

More than ever, the entertainment industry appears to have reached its peak. As a result, there is always a new song to download. It is not strange to find schoolchildren with their ears plugged with headsets and nodding to the rhythm of music, humming and miming songs from their favourite artistes.

Since the internet is affordable and accessible to many people, it should ordinarily be seen as one of the factors that aid performance. But the internet’s amazing resources seem to be ignored by scores of pupils who spend an average of three and four hours online every day. It is almost impossible to find a secondary school pupil, especially in urban or sub-urban communities, that does not own a smart phone and thoroughly understands how to manipulate the device to do as he or she wishes. Maybe it is time to research deeply into how to use some of these devices to improve knowledge.

Blanket rules by most schools banning all technology enabled devices may not be in the best interest of their pupils, if the baby and the bathwater are not to be thrown away. Schools may need to face the reality of the present day and age.

Technology is addictive. Educational institutions may need to explore the addictive nature of the internet and fix the problem of failure partly from this perspective. If new media technology is shaping several aspects of our lives and we are adjusting fast, education should not be left out. If anything, learning should be fun and easier.

Pupils no longer need to carry around dictionaries, encyclopaedia, maps and a number of other textbooks. They have the advantage of several options to choose from online or even on a single device. Chemistry students will find videos explaining the concept of organic chemistry from several sources online, same way a biology student can find explicit videos on the process of meiosis and mitosis that can engrave the knowledge in memory permanently. It is likely that students will favour an after-school assignment that’s happening on Facebook to one requiring the conventional approach.

There is however the need for setting boundaries to guide students in accessing these resources. Maybe it is also important to state that with technology, it is easier for the poor to get education today than it was previously.

A thorough grasp of the English Language is also possible with the deluge of literatures available and accessible online in addition to the ease with which newspapers can be accessed to enable students build a rich vocabulary base, understand national issues and also have grasp of the register of various disciplines and industries – a knowledge regularly tested by external examiners like WAEC.

With technology here to stay and it will be an error on the part of educational administrators to ignore this. It is worrisome to have external examiners only adopt technology in making administration of the examinations possible through form purchase and result checks alone. It should be wholesome. Learning needs to find a place in this revolution as it is. one certain way to keep students engaged and excited about learning. New media driven education is not about having computer labs in schools, it’s deeper than that.

Education ought to be a major priority 0f the Nigerian government with a need to make public primary and secondary schools as competitive and qualitative as the private ones. The glorious era of Nigeria’s educational system was after all during the period when the public secondary school reigned. There is also the dire need to review the educational budget of Nigeria. Ghana’s budget currently stands at 31 per cent; Coted’Ivoire’s 30 per cent, Uganda’s 27 per cent and Swaziland’s 24.6 per cent makes a mockery of Nigeria’s miserable 10.7 per cent. Education also needs to be redesigned to attract brilliant hands, since the quality of teachers also affects learning.

Entertainment and sports, two industries are popular with the youth today, do not develop a country. Urgent attention has to be paid to the education sector or like the growing failure rate, Nigeria will continue to grow negatively in ranking on several development indices and fate ourselves with a future with very shaky foundation that would draw tears from us many years from now.