Recently, the West African Examination Council (WAEC) celebrates best students in 2020 Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) . The three students all females made clean A1s in their subjects.
They are Victory Yinka– Banjo of Princeton College, Aguda, Surulere, Lagos. Adebowale Dorcas Ayooluwa of Emerald Laurel Comprehensive College, Ibadan and Nwaozuzu Confidence Chimanza of Total Education Development Academy, Owerri, Imo State.
A distinction in 9 subjects including English, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and Physics is absolutely phenomenon. That was exactly the feat Madu Stephanie Chiemela achieved at the Federal Government College Ogbomoso a few months ago.
In a Facebook post, media celebrity and renowned broadcaster, Soni Irabor wrote on Chiemela stellar performance.
” She must be encouraged and nurtured for a greater and better Nigeria. But first, she comes first in every way. Congratulations my dear. May God guide and protect your path”.
Also, at the graduation ceremony in one of the first generation Universities earlier in the year, the girls were winning almost all the awards. Yours sincerely watched with awe as most of the awardees were accompanied by their mothers and female guardians; with isolated cases of male presence.
One big question remain palpable in the minds of everyone present. Where are the boys?
Over the years, a huge attention had been made on the girl-child education. And veritably so, because when you educate a woman, you educate the society. However it appears the boy-child is leaving the academic stage for the girls. He seems disenchanted with the rigors and pedagogy of learning. He would rather go the easy, mundane, unedifying and often dangerous path of cultism, drugs, gangsterism, kidnapping, advance fee fraud a.k.a. Yahoo, gambling, armed robbery and all manner of vices.
The rate at which the boy-child is exposed to sundry money- making ventures and the drive for primitive accumulation of material things, even at the expense of basic education and training, calls for interrogation in all quarters.
It is common sight to see a boy of 16 or 17, who is expected to be on the final lap of secondary education, riding on either commercial motorbike or tricycle (Keke). Whereas, his female siblings are in school or learning a vocation.
Watching some video clips on social media, one is moved to tears as our boys experiment with all sorts of substances just to be ” high'”.
Apart from alcohol, marijuana and other psychotropic substances, of a particular concern to parents ( especially in South East Nigeria) is a biochemical substance called Mpiriminri– a madning intoxicant that makes the addicts go Gaga and often into an epileptic trance or wild gyration.
Speaking on African Independent Television AIT early morning programme, Kakaaki, former Director-General , National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons ( NAPTIP) Dame Julie Okoh-Donli admonished that it is time for the country to give equal attention to the boy-child education if we don’t want to breed a generation of quality women without quality men to marry them.
” We must start to groom young men to be responsible, after all they are going to be husbands to our well groomed and much cherished daughters”.
Alas! The prediction of the Catholic Church over a decade ago, that in the following decades our girls will not have good boys or men to marry, is sadly coming to a reality.
