The House of Representatives yesterday mandated its committee on education to conduct an investigation into circumstances surrounding the mass failure of Nigerian students in the examinations organised by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO) in recent years.
The resolution came on the heels of a motion sponsored by Hon. Umaru Kurfi and 17 other lawmakers who said they were alarmed at the development.

The 2009 WAEC result released by its National Headquarters indicated that only 356,981 out of 1,373,009 candidates representing 25.99 per cent obtained five credits including English and Mathematics. Available statistics revealed a failure rate of 75 per cent in the case of WAEC and a similar percentage in the case of NECO.
Kurfi expressed dismay that the trend of poor performance in the education sector in the country was capable of frustrating the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs), the Vision 202020 as well as the Seven Point Agenda.
He blamed the phenomenon partly on what he described as the “very weak administrative mechanism” in the nation’s education regulatory authorities and urged the Federal Government to adopt urgent and realistic measures to reverse the trend.

In separate contributions to the debate, some lawmakers urged the Executive to declare a state of emergency s in the education sector while seasoned technocrats should be drafted to man the sector in order to rescue the falling standards.

Minority Leader of the House, Honourable Mohammed Ndume, disclosed that it was the children of the poor that were mostly affected in the mass failure, adding that the 26 per cent pass recorded in both examinations was mainly students of private schools whose parents have the money to fund such careers. There were also calls for a re-introduction of the old Teachers’ Training Colleges to raise a new breed of teachers that would salvage the situation but the demand for a through investigations into the situation was unanimously adopted.