SPACES FOR CHANGE [S4C]
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Thursday, 4 December 2014
Monday, 22 September 2014
UPDATE ON THE ADAMAWA GOVERNORSHIP BYE-ELECTION
ADAMAWA GOVERNORSHIP BYE-ELECTION CANDIDATES
PARTY
|
NAME
OF CANDIDATE
|
All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA)
|
Aminu Hamman Joda
|
Kowa Party (KP)
|
Aminu Dahiru Waziri Kowa
|
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
|
Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri
|
All Progressives Congress (APC)
|
Mohammed Jubrilla Umar
|
Social Democratic Party (SDP)
|
Habila Yerima
|
Mega Peoples Progressive Party (MPPP)
|
Abdulnasir Umar Hamman
|
All Progressive Alliance (APA)
|
Mohammed Aminu Tijani
|
Peoples Party of Nigeria (PPN)
|
Simon Bawa
|
National Conscience Party (NCP)
|
Mohammed Malgwi
|
Monday, 15 September 2014
ADAMAWA GOVERNORSHIP BYE-ELECTION NOTICE
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has
released the time table and schedule of activities for the forthcoming Adamawa
State governorship bye-election. The bye- election to replace the impeached
Governor Murtala Nyako has been slated for October 11, in accordance with
Section 191(2) of the 1999 Constitution. Below is the schedule of activities
ADAMAWA ELECTION TIME TABLE
ACTIVITY
|
DATE
|
REMARKS
|
Notice of election
|
15th August, 2014
|
Section 30(3) of the Electoral Act, 2010 provides not later than 14
days before the election.
|
Last date for the conduct of Party Primaries including resolution of
disputes arising from the Primaries
|
7th September, 2014
|
To enable Political Parties democratically nominate candidates for
the election as required by Section 87 of the Electoral Act, 2010
|
Last day for the submission of Forms CFOO2, CF001 and nomination
forms at the INEC Headquarters.
|
17th September, 2014
|
Section 31(1) of the Electoral Act, 2010 provides for not later than
60 days before the election.
|
Last day for the publication of Personal Particulars of candidate.
CF001.
|
23rd September, 2014
|
Section 31(3) of the Electoral Act, 2010 provides for publication
within 7 days of the receipt of the form CF001.
|
Submission of names of Party Agents for the election to the Electoral
Officer of the Local Government.
|
29th September, 2014
|
Section 45 of the Electoral Act, 2010. Provides not later than 7 days
before the election.
|
Last day for campaigns.
|
9th October, 2014
|
Section 99(1) of the Electoral Act, 2010 prohibits advertisements or
broadcasts of campaigns 24hours prior to the day of election.
|
Date of election.
|
11th October, 2014
|
Section 191(2) of the constitution of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) provides for conduct of bye-elections within three
months of vacancy.
|
Tuesday, 26 August 2014
WAEC AND THE REASONS FOR MASS FAILURE
There has been an alarming outcry
over the number of students said to have failed the 2014 Senior School
Certificate Examination (SSCE) conducted by the West African Examination
Council (WAEC). The statistics available on the WAEC webpage says 1,692,435
candidates, comprising 929,075 males and 763,360 females sat for the
examination in the country. 145,795 candidates representing 8.61 percent had
their results withheld for alleged examination malpractice. 1,293,389
candidates representing 76.42 percent, obtained credits and above in three
subjects, while 1,148,262 candidates representing 67.84 percent, obtained
credits and above in four subjects. Of the total number of candidates that sat
for the examination, 791,227 candidates representing 46.75 percent obtained six
credits and above while 982,472 candidates representing 58.05 percent obtained
five credits and above. A total of 529,425 candidates representing 31.28
percent obtained credits in five subjects and above including English language
and Mathematics.
Many reasons have been alluded to be
responsible for this national disgrace, they range from unseriousness on the
part of the students who instead of preparing hard for their examination are
busy following friends and socializing on Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, My space,
more interested in watching the English premier league and European football
league, watching television and movies, pinging on their smart mobile phones as
well as avidly prefer to watch and take part in the various talent shows like
Big Brother Africa, MTN project fame, West African Idols to name a few to
serious ineptitude on the part of the WAEC as revealed by the appalling
condition under which examiners work as they struggle with thousands of
scripts, the poor remuneration of examiners by WAEC which affects the quality
of work, payment per script being as low as N11 per script, the drop in the
quality of examiners employed to mark and grade exam papers, The obvious
marking guide errors by WAEC which examiners are not allowed to correct yet
leads to the failure of students in the subject, lack of any form of capacity
building conferences, seminars and workshops that will reinforce best practices
in test evaluation amongst examiners and of course the many fundamental
issues facing and choking the country’s
educational system.
Members of the Spaces for Change’s
forum on facebook also had the following to say.
Top of Form
Mohammed Sani The mass
media as a channel of communication has done more harm than good to the
academic future of our teenagers due to the uncensored nature of programs being
dished out for public consumption.
Amaechi Felix Okonkwo We need to encourage the development of positive applications
that would still tickle the fancy of the youths. That said, I think this
failure took place long before the examinations; right in the homes these kids
come from. Many parents speak pidgin English to their children, neglect to
oversee their homework exercises, are too busy to attend open day, patronize
illicit exam machineries, bribe to get their children admitted to schools,
refuse the recommendations of the school if the child is to repeat a class,
etc. So the child grows up with a mentality. The university dons are the worst
because they demand for settlement to give pass marks.
Gbelela Olabisi Michael
The loosen roles of the parents in building and guiding their wards and
children to act right! I remember growing despite the absence of the many
instances listed above, my generation has its fair share of distractions as
well but our parents and the community raised us right to read and study! I was
distracted with a fair share of table tennis, table soccer table, snooker
table, gambling, plenty love letter writing, playing soccer, relish inter house
sports etc. but in the midst of them all, my half literate parents never
stopped to impress and force me to read, learn and be educated! The community
also joined hands in raising my generation to certain level too! Alas where is
the community now? where are the parents who hitherto were interested in
knowing what their children are going through academically other than being
responsible in paying school fees! No more attention nowadays, some parents
only chance of seeing their children are during the weekend.
Nick Enahoro In the
first place kids and youths are not supposed to be allowed to play all their
spare time, education or not.
A bright mind is encouraged to grow by being given tasks & duties which cause the person to think and use initiative and take an interest in things that can be of benefit to the child not just pastimes and dreams. Good parenting is much more than just 'loving' your child.
A bright mind is encouraged to grow by being given tasks & duties which cause the person to think and use initiative and take an interest in things that can be of benefit to the child not just pastimes and dreams. Good parenting is much more than just 'loving' your child.
Manpan Wungak All of what
you mentioned amounts to one reason: DISTRACTIONS.
There are many other reasons.
2. Systemic failure- our educational system has literally collapsed. Does anyone even understand what our policy on education is anymore? What are the responsibilities of the different tiers of government? Gone are the days of very strict and serious minded Education Officers and Headmasters. Do we still send these people responsible for basic education on foreign training? Do we recruit primary school teachers based on competence? How often do we review our curriculum? Is what is taught relevant to societal realities?
3. Emphasis on paper qualifications- which means most people just want the certificate without the necessary accompanying learning. So any how you get the certificate is ok. Are you surprised people pay for others to write their exams or just simply "pay" the examiner to pass them?
4. Failed parenting- our parents were strict with us. They insisted we did the right thing. That included reading your books and less TV. Nowadays most of us teach our kids how to cut corners and use TV to distract them while we do our things ( pinging on blackberry, tweeting and face booking). How many parents take time to teach their kids that difficult maths or English. We take them to Europe for holidays but can't even point them to the library (do those buildings still exist?).
5. Funding or the lack of it
6. Corruption (not stealing)...just the basic doing what is not suppose to be...
7. Corruption in this case... I should have said stealing money meant for funding education because the people in charge are corrupt. Hence the condition of teaching and learning are basically pedestrian and there's no motivation to teach or learn.
There are many other reasons.
2. Systemic failure- our educational system has literally collapsed. Does anyone even understand what our policy on education is anymore? What are the responsibilities of the different tiers of government? Gone are the days of very strict and serious minded Education Officers and Headmasters. Do we still send these people responsible for basic education on foreign training? Do we recruit primary school teachers based on competence? How often do we review our curriculum? Is what is taught relevant to societal realities?
3. Emphasis on paper qualifications- which means most people just want the certificate without the necessary accompanying learning. So any how you get the certificate is ok. Are you surprised people pay for others to write their exams or just simply "pay" the examiner to pass them?
4. Failed parenting- our parents were strict with us. They insisted we did the right thing. That included reading your books and less TV. Nowadays most of us teach our kids how to cut corners and use TV to distract them while we do our things ( pinging on blackberry, tweeting and face booking). How many parents take time to teach their kids that difficult maths or English. We take them to Europe for holidays but can't even point them to the library (do those buildings still exist?).
5. Funding or the lack of it
6. Corruption (not stealing)...just the basic doing what is not suppose to be...
7. Corruption in this case... I should have said stealing money meant for funding education because the people in charge are corrupt. Hence the condition of teaching and learning are basically pedestrian and there's no motivation to teach or learn.
Ogundiran Joseph Olusola What we need in this country is simply re-orientation from
top to bottom
Wale Edun In addition to the above, Parents
nowadays are too weak and soft to give their wards a proper guidance and instill
moral and discipline either because of their busy lifestyle or pressure from
family and friends of some sort to catch up with the net worthy people, they
just want to rank up on what in the end could be fruitless and full of regret
not looking after their children. some parents themselves are not a good role
model to their wards they get themselves involved in some shady activities that
is unclean and their wards will like to emulate what they are seeing them do,
nothing like secrecy, nothing like you are too young to know this, please leave
my room when two adults are talking. The way to reverse these trends is for the
Parents and Teachers and policy makers on education to work together and find a
workable recommendations which would be subject to review to see how far it
goes,
Chinedu Chiefsan Einstein once
remarked "it takes 100 experiments to prove a theory and 1 single
experiment to disprove it". As a matter of fact, there are perhaps hundreds
of thousands of students who do all the stuffs you painstakingly outlined above
and still come up tops in academics.
The reason why our students are performing poorly is not due to frequent use of the internet or social media but as a result of a breakdown in our education system both from the supply side of the equation (production of education) and the demand side (learning itself).
By the way, my project research work is to investigate whether teachers' trainings and experience affect students performances in these WASC subjects. Well, while it is still at the early stages, the results from some of the literatures I've gone through thus were quite interesting.
We have a broken system and you can't realistically expect to produce a sweet juice from a rotten apple.
The reason why our students are performing poorly is not due to frequent use of the internet or social media but as a result of a breakdown in our education system both from the supply side of the equation (production of education) and the demand side (learning itself).
By the way, my project research work is to investigate whether teachers' trainings and experience affect students performances in these WASC subjects. Well, while it is still at the early stages, the results from some of the literatures I've gone through thus were quite interesting.
We have a broken system and you can't realistically expect to produce a sweet juice from a rotten apple.
Chinedu Chiefsan. I am a student but am very active on social media from
What's app to LinkedIn and Twitter. I use the internet almost all the time to
read stuffs from my favourite celebrities to learning maths on YouTube/Khan
Academy. I will gladly give up my food for a chance to watch an Arsenal match
or a Formula1 race.
The television is always switched on to Channels TV or Bloomberg to keep up with financial news yet I still find time to finish my books before the end of the semester and still do exceedingly well in exams with a 95% class attendance rate.
I know a couple of guys too whose daily activities are not so different and these are habits developed right from secondary school. Finally, let us not also forget not every child/student, especially those in the rural areas, has access to all these trendy stuffs and yet they still fail in exams. Thus pointing to a much deeper problem.
The television is always switched on to Channels TV or Bloomberg to keep up with financial news yet I still find time to finish my books before the end of the semester and still do exceedingly well in exams with a 95% class attendance rate.
I know a couple of guys too whose daily activities are not so different and these are habits developed right from secondary school. Finally, let us not also forget not every child/student, especially those in the rural areas, has access to all these trendy stuffs and yet they still fail in exams. Thus pointing to a much deeper problem.
Amaechi Felix Okonkwo The complex truth is
that students need to work harder these days but do not realise it. I remember
my years in Senior Secondary School, a public school in Lagos. The reading room
had no books and some subjects had no teachers or even good teachers. With the
aid of my textbook teachers Osei Yaw Ababio, Nelkon & Parker, PN Okeke,
Afolayan, Goe Cheng Long, etc, I was able to make active use of the reading
room and win many quiz competitions for my school. The consciousness of self
help came upon me during preparations for Junior WAEC. It became clear to me
that I must for no reason, depend my teachers or the educational system for
that matter.
Femi Afolaby Snow I think school boards and parents should read all your
comments, bring it all together and help these strolling away students, and
possibly make you guys a committee to resolve the failing or sorry failed system.
Nick Enahoro
The thing is, we now have a voice (social media, elections).. and we should
continue to use this voice to share our thoughts, air our grievances, proffer
solutions, push our demands etc. When l was younger, we had none of these
things.
So there is more hope today than before. Keep on with the positive!
So there is more hope today than before. Keep on with the positive!
Benjamin We need to review this Prussian education system. For
example children want to learn how to build houses, the educational system will
break it down into unintelligent subjects like maths, English, woodwork, biology,
physics, agric etc. without showing the real pictures. I think the problem is
not in the children nor teachers, but in the education system.
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