The recently released 2014 May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results once again showed an alarming rate of failure. Indeed, the latest result showed a very dismal performance by secondary school students in their final qualifying examinations.

For the past six years, there has been a registered and visible pattern of mass failure among the students in their WAEC and other examinations. For instance, last year (2013) May/June result showed that only 36.57 per cent of the candidates could obtain five credits and above, including English Language and Mathematics. Similarly, in 2012, the percentage was barely 38.81. In 2010, only 317,142 candidates or 23.71 per cent obtained five credits with English and Mathematics. In 2009, the performance was 26 per cent of the 1,373,009 candidates.

A situation where out of the 1,692,435 candidates who sat for the examination only 529,425, representing 31.28 per cent could obtain credits in five subjects and above, including English and Mathematics, can only be worrisome. Therefore, all stakeholders should come together to address this looming national calamity by identifying the possible causes and see how they can be resolved.
Without doubt, students have almost stopped reading and studying for their examinations. This has been an established sociological trend for the past two decades especially in the last five to ten years. There has been consistent decline in reading culture and adequate preparations for final examinations.
The situation is even worse in the public schools where a combination of factors have collaborated to erode the reading culture hitherto known in the past. Here, enforcement of discipline, a corollary to reading habit, by teachers has fallen apart. Teachers no longer care whether students are reading their books or not anymore for variety of reasons including poor welfare and conditions of service.
It has also been discovered in many states of the federation that many teachers are not prima facie qualified to teach as they gamed their teaching appointments with forged certificates and credentials. state governments have unfortunately not been able to sack the affected teachers because of the existing unemployment rate in the country. the situation is not only unhelpful but virtually hopeless in this regard.
Consequently too, students have seized the lax atmosphere to throw away all cautions by engaging in all sorts of distractive activities. Poor infrastructure also contributes its deleterious share to the worsening situation.
Parents also contribute to this ugly trend, through their failure to enforce discipline at home and providing for their wards so that they can face their books. In the situation of increasing economic hardships, children and wards are seen hawking on the streets to help keep their home's economic front together. Corruption in government circles and loss of social values are also contributory factors to the worsening standard of education and the concomitant high rate of failure in qualifying examinations.

But perhaps the worst culprit is the advent of GSM phones and the easy access to them by children and wards in the last decade. Today, Blackberry phones, IPad, Iphones, and other communication gadgets can be seen being clutched by many a citizen. Youth and very young ones can be seen nowadays ever busy fiddling with these gadgets day and night, listening to music, watching online videos, chatting regularly with their connected recipients through Twitter, Skype, WeChat, WhatsApp, bbm, 2go, Navita, etc. As they do this, the youth and young ones fritter away their valuable time needed to concentrate on reading their books.
What is so nauseatingly illogical about this unwholesome situation is that those who invented all the electronic communication gadgets and their numerous features are educated ones who have spent their time to read and obtain necessary university degrees and certifications to toil in their laboratories to bring out all the gadgets that are now scrambling the heads of our youths and even adults in this part of the world.

Government, education authorities, parents and other concerned stakeholders must come together to start addressing this huge problem. The destiny of the nation is at stake. No nation develops beyond its educational and/or intellectual capacity. The current situation is a clear and present danger to the socioeconomic fabric and the political system of the nation.