By Ibraheem Solaudeen.
The Brain Builders International (BBI), a youth based non-governmental organization has reiterated its call for improved funding of education in Kwara state.
According to BBI, its advocacy is in consonance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4, which seeks to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
The NGO appraised a document recently published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which contained the statistics of WAEC results in Nigeria from 2016 – 2018.
The NBS report covered the details of high performing states, the number of students who sat for the exam among others.
In his analysis, the BBI Executive Director, Abideen Opeyemi Olasupo evaluated the performance in Kwara state compared to other states in the North Central part of the country.
He said: “It was discovered that Kwara led the pack in terms of students who had 5 credits and above including Mathematics and English Language in 2016 and 2017.
“According to this chart, Kwara state recorded a 55.1% pass rate in 2016, 62.03% in 2017 but dropped to 49.24% in 2018.
“However, in 2018, Kwara dropped one place down to take second in the performance in North Central. While the performance of the previous years have been commendable, the fall in performance also calls for attention.
“On the national level, the state has failed to break into the top ten performers in the last few years despite leading the pack in its Geopolitical zone.
“The state also recorded an average of 34,000 students sitting for the exam in the last 3 years with about 50% representation of both males and females in 2018.”
Olasupo noted that the Brain Builders International had, on August 13, organized an event to commemorate the UN International Youth Day 2019, where discussions were focused on solving the challenges in education, such as high rate of illiteracy and out-of-school children.
He added that recommendations were made by the group, enjoining the Kwara State government and the State House of Assembly to commit to funding SDGs Goal 4 by ensuring that the supplementary budget caters for education adequately.
“With states like Lagos and Abia taking pole position in recent years, we believe that Kwara state can be among the top performers in the country if the government invests more in education.
“In our bid to improve the quality and accessibility of education, as advocates of SDGs 4, we implore the Kwara state government to invest more in education for improved performances across board and place Kwara on the high rungs of the ladder in Nigeria”, the BBI director said.