Osun blasts protesting students over WAEC fees

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NIGERIA: OSUN State government is not happy over the protest embarked upon by some secondary school students in the state, which led to vandalization of government property.

Government said that the show of anger by the aggrieved students in Ile-Ife and Iwo was condemnable as it was unnecessary.

Some of the students, GatewayMail learnt, destroyed government property over their disqualification from enjoying government payment of their registration fees for the West African Examination Council (WAEC).

The Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola government said that it was deplorable that students who failed their mock examination to qualify for the benefit could embark on destruction of government property.

The government in a release signed by the Director, Bureau of Communication and Strategy, Office of the Governor, Mr. Semiu Okanlawon, said that the students should have been remorseful rather than embarking on their destruction spree.

The government explained that the refusal to register the students for the West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) was because they performed poorly in the pre-WASCE tests conducted by their schools.

It said that following their poor performance, it would be irresponsible for the government to pay for their registration fees as their mock examination results showed that they were not ready to do well in the impending WASCE.

“The Government of Osun, in the unmistakable resolve and determination to bring the best out of the students, has said it ‎will henceforth register only final year students for external examination after the conduct of the in-house mock examination,” the government said.
It stressed: “Students who fail to demonstrate their potential success at the final examination by scoring credits in at least four subjects will not be paid for by the government. Any parent who wants to gamble can register their children.”
‎The government further stated that under Aregbesola the education sector had witnessed a turn-around for good, particularly with the provision of a conducive environment.

The government also said that it had provided the state-of-the-art schools and had invested in training and retraining of its teachers.

With the provision of all of these, government said that it expected to see great improvement in the average performance of its registered students in the two required examinations – WASCE and National Examination Council (NECO).

“It is this decision of government that some disgruntled few among the students ‎went to the streets to protest against in Ile-Ife and Iwo,” government said, while adding: “Whereas government decision was first and foremost informed on ‎the need to seek better performance of the students.”

“Besides, the economic realities no longer permits wastage of resources,” it maintained.

It stressed: “Thus government wanted only those who will excel after its investment on them and not those who will fritter away the meagre resources by performing abysmally in the examination.”

Government stated that it cannot allow indiscipline and irresponsible behaviors on the students, who are leaders of tomorrow, adding that it would deploy the full weight of the law to deal with an act of lawless, should it recur again in all the nooks and crannies of the state.

• By Tope Kayode-Adedeji

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