As NYSC Members Can’t Read Or Write
The Head of Cartoon Department on this newspaper, Mr. Leke Moses, did his thing in style as usual last Friday when, in the back page ‘9jaman’ cartoon strip, he served a caricature which said: ‘Many NYSC members can’t read, write – DG’; and then capped it with a rider that conveyed his impression of the preoccupation of corps members possibly responsible for their academic indolence this way: ‘But they can browse’.
That was how the veteran newspaper cartoonist captured the recent statement credited to the Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brigadier-General Nnamdi Okore-Affia, who lamented that many corps members could hardly communicate in English Language, let alone being able to teach in the classrooms. According to Okore-Affia, the level of academic deficiency among corps members has heightened their rejection (in their places of primary assignment) and redundancy. Many of the illiterate corps members were said to be over-aged, underwent part-time programmes or products of unaccredited courses.
Faulting the NYSC DG’s frank talk would mean a most ludicrous attempt to cover-up the shame currently represented by the nation’s education system, from the formative stages to the top. The sordid performances of secondary school students, especially in external examinations in the last couple of years, have been consistently mournful and really demand that a day be set aside by the Federal Government for Nigerians to weep for the upcoming generation.
The trends are basically the same for exams conducted by both the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO). Results of the May/June 2012 West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE), released by WAEC last year, for instance, revealed that out of the 1,695,878 candidates who sat for the exam, only 649,156 candidates or 38.81 percent emerged with credits in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, the minimum qualification for tertiary education admission, especially in universities and allied institutions. The performance percentages for 2010 and 2011 were 23.71 and 30.91, respectively.
For the November/December, 2012 WASSCE, 62.03 percent of the students who wrote the exam failed, with only 37.97 percent or 150,615 out of a total of 396,614 obtaining five credits, including English Language and Mathematics. Most striking, however, was WAEC’s revelation that blind students performed better than those without sight problems, with 46.93 percent of the 49 blind students that registered for the examination recording five credits, including English Language, as they don’t sit for Mathematics and Science practicals in WASSCE examinations.
It was this aspect of the result that made me remember the Leke Moses cartoon on NYSC members who can’t read and write, but can browse the internet for eternity, not in search of rewarding knowledge, but mostly to deprave their morals with cut-and-paste information, pornography, relationship and other unhelpful frivolities.
Concerned Nigerians, particularly educationists, blame the tragedy on the dearth of textbooks, as well as a diminishing reading culture. Equally fingered are the get-rich-quick syndrome, the bug that haunts ‘yahoo-yahoo boys’; the distractions of paid-for-television-programmes promoted by corporate entities to market their products, which promises to produce super stars overnight; as well as the new found craze for foreign football. Commentators also blame poor training and retraining for teachers, disappearance of educational programmes from the media and bogging students down with countless subjects usually made compulsory by the examination bodies, which candidates must sit for.
All the observations might be right, but the chief culprit seems to be the fact that most Nigerian youths have refused to utilise the limitless opportunities offered by the internet and the social media to better their lot academically. Most Nigerian youths follow latest trends on the internet and social media with consummate interest and concentration, but cannot provide simple answers to commonest current affairs questions except they go to ‘Google’; let alone thinking of reading serious textbooks.
In the fray, too, are some young parents who have not only turned fun-seeking slaves on the internet, but encourage their under-aged children with latest GSM phones with which they browse anything ‘browseable’, including the obscene which thrills them the most. It may be said with all candour, therefore, that even as lamentable as the Nigerian educational system has become, dedicated students will always come out in flying colours. In addition to the need for a sound school system and quality teachers, parental and sometimes, self supervision, restraint and discipline, hold the key to success in education. And except Nigerian youths show more dedication to their studies like the 46.93 percent of the 49 blind students that registered for the November/ December, 2012 WASSCE, and made five credits including English Language, insulting the NYSC with corps members who can neither read nor write is here to stay.
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