The House of Representatives yesterday called on the Federal Government to as a matter of urgency address the deplorable condition in the Basic and Secondary Education in the country, as it was unable to meet the two Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on education.
Moving the motion on the floor of the House, Hon. Muhammed Usman (Kaduna State) lamented the unacceptable decay in both infrastructural and learning facilities in all Government Schools across the country.
Speaking further, Hon. Usman said that the learning outcomes in the basic and secondary Education levels have been very low, as expert studies show that less than 30% of primary school pupils passed the Common Entrance Examinations.
“Survey tests carried out at secondary school level revealed that students’ performance in some important subjects such as Mathematics and English was below 36%”.
“Hence between 2004 and 2014 an average of 76% of candidates who sat for the West African Examinations Council examinations (WAEC) failed to get the minimum of 5 credits”.
Aware that 31%-38% pass in the WAEC examinations in 2014 and 2015 have been challenged as not being a measure of the true situation, Hon. Usman accused School administrators, proprietors WAEC officials as well as Parents of corruption and examination malpractice across the nation.
“Millions of children of school age in Nigeria have no access to basic and secondary education ”
” in fact, the lack of access to basic education has placed Nigeria in the embarrassing position of having the largest number of Out-of-school Children in the world “.
Education in Nigeria he said was poorly funded and raised a lot of concern as the country has the lowest budgetary allocation to education in Africa.
Where some countries spend as much as 33% of their annual revenues on education, Nigeria is unable to meet even the UNESCO bench mark of 27%, he added.
In resolution, the House urged the Federal Government, States and Local Govt. Councils to address infrastructural decay in the Primary and Secondary in their respective sphere of jurisdiction.
Just as they were expected to provide most up-to-date teaching and learning resources as well as explore opportunities of direct funding to the Schools.
With the majority of the House in support of the motion when put to vote by the Speaker Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara who presided over the motion, he then referred it to Committee on Education for further legislative input and report to House within two weeks.
