JRC ATTRIBUTES POOR ACADEMIC
PERFORMANCE TO EXAM MAL-PRACTICE
Jethro Yerga, Jalingo
A prolific writer and Coordinator of Jalingo Reading Campaign (JRC) Taraba State, Mr. Terkule Aorabee (Snr.), has attributed the raging poor academic performance of students to examination mal-practices in some Nigerian schools.
Mr. Terkule Aorabee (snr) stated this while speaking with journalists on various academic issues at the occasion of a launching of Ten Million Naira (10, 000.000.00) Book Development Fund and investiture of the Executive Governor of Taraba State, Arc. Darius Dickson Ishaku as grand patron of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Taraba State Chapter at the Taraba State University Jalingo.
He stated that most students relaxed from reading when they have prior knowledge that they would be assisted in their final year examinations thus missing a lot of things that they would have acquired when they adequately prepare for the examinations.
“The issue of poor academic performance among students in our schools nowadays is a big issue. It has to do with the culture of examination mal- practices that are going on in some of our schools.
“Most of our schools instead of preparing the student adequately and pressurizing them to read hard for their examinations, sometimes choose to go for examination mal-practices and I tell you that is what is killing our students academically because when somebody knows that he or she is going to be assisted in an examination, he or she will definitely sleep on his feet”. He stated.
Mr. Aorabee, an author of many books and poems called on parents to top heaping the blame of their wards poor academic performances on the wards alone, but to also extend same to their teachers as well, especially that the teachers are the ones who are the pioneer who are supposed to show the way to the students.
While encouraging students to go into creative writing, the prolific writer noted that a lot of wealth could be acquired through creative writing. He said, “the society is gradually going back to the old days where writing was more celebrated than science. We had gone away to embrace sciences when we don’t have laboratories, when we don’t do researches to find out new thing.
“It is when you go into creative writing that you are taken to the workshop of any language at all. The writers are the real ones who take you to the workshop of writing. Every language develops faster when you have books written in that language”. He added.
The coordinator who expressed concern over great number of languages that cannot be taught in Nigerian schools because they did not have books or novels written in them to bring out their prosody, called on Nigeria authors to extend their frontiers and do justice to the situation even as he expressed hope that with the good number of students coming out from Taraba State University and even in Secondary Schools, ANA would bring them up so that they would be proficient in the job to enable them to also earn money from it.
