REASONS NIGERIAN STUDENTS FAILED UTME RIDICULOUSLY

 You are also probably appalled by the recently recorded failures of students who sat for the 2013 UTME examinations. However this should not come as a surprise to any of us because it is glaring our educational system has been sitting on a time bomb for years waiting to explode. I have had to take an introspective step backwards and take a cursory look at some of the perceived reasons for the massive failure of the nation’s upcoming generation.

8.  Social media addiction 

We can’t underrate the positive effects of social media in our lives and businesses. Through it we are informed, socially up to date with trending news and sometimes even educated. However  Facebook, Watsapp, Blackberry, 2go and a host of other social media activities have begin to take its negative toll in the lives of this present generation of students. Amazing how a large number of them don’t actually know how to use a computer in the real sense. Why won’t they fail?

7. Lack of proper guidance 

I personally would readily blame this on the Nigerian educational system especially the Government owned schools. The value of good counseling and proper guidance for the student right from the very beginnings of his educational life, cannot be overemphasized. As a result we have students in departments where they don’t have any business. Their mental, behavioural and psychological make-up which should guide their choice of department is often times ignored making them have to struggle extra hard to assimilate whatever is being taught while sometimes getting lost in the details. 

6. Too many distractions 

Distractions emanating from too much music, extreme interest in football (UEFA champions league/EPL), and a host of other unfavourable topics have eaten deep into the lives of these lads. You walk the streets and all you see are Wizkid wannabes in dressing, speech and outlook to life. 

5. Multinational companies 

These guys are more interested in generating leads and improving ROI for their selfish interests and booming businesses at the expense of the enlightenment of a whole generation. All we see these days on tv are uncountable reality tv shows for music, dance and God knows what. We are a developing country and now these will only make us stagnant. I hope the country does not degenerate to the likes of some developed countries whose economies are being run by foreigners (you know which). 

4. Administrative ineffectiveness 

Sometimes I’m left wondering who is at the helm of affairs of the planning, logistics and conduct of the UTME exams. We had reports of students whose choice was paper and pencil instead of CBT but ended up writing the CBT exams and not knowing what to do.

3. Falling standards 

Back in the early 1970s Nigerians students could compete shoulder to shoulder with their counter contemporaries in Ivy League universities but today the reverse is the case. Being in school today is more about students wanting to leave home and not the search of knowledge. These students get desperate to just get into the university no matter what and move on with their lives. 

2. Nigerian students hardly read

 Gone were the days when parents scheduled time for TV and more time for reading, reading and more reading. We read so much that we could recite by heart numerous passages of Shakespeare.  Nowadays literature students don’t even know which and which text to read for exams.

1. Malpractice 

Over the years malpractice has been a cankerworm in the Nigerian educational sphere. We have swum for so long in its murky waters and ended up bathing the younger generation with the ills therein. Students today don’t even think they can make the required pass marks without the aid of solved questions made available to them by the creative scheming of their teachers, parent, friends, siblings, principals e.t.c. Yes everybody seems to be into malpractice these days with the exception of a minute few.