The Fate of Science Learners in Nigeria

As the days unfold, science and technology continue to gain momentum within the shores of the global community, signifying its inevitable role in contemporary society.

At such a time like this, every nation is required to completely scrutinize the prospects of her science sector. It’s therefore pertinent for Nigeria to, at this critical moment, look inwards in a bid to discover the existing encumbrances surrounding the said field with a view to eradicating them.

There has conspicuously been a tremendous decline in the rate of seriousness among most science students in various levels of learning on the African continent, particularly Nigeria. A scenario of such has over the years served as a nuisance in the area of science and technology.

It’s noteworthy that growth and development is required in every individual to every nation, in every aspect of human endeavor. For development to take place, science and tech must go hand in hand.

Science is fundamentally noted as the study of knowledge, which is made into a system, and depends on analyzing facts. Tech is the outright application of this scientific knowledge. In other words, tech transforms knowledge from science into reality.

The fact is, for any successful economy – especially in today’s quest for knowledge based economies – science and tech are the primary requisites. If any nation relegates the two recipes to the background, the chances of getting herself developed becomes far-fetched, thus stands to be classified as an undeveloped nation.

A country or society that’s not able to prosper on these grounds wouldn’t be able to sustain the lives in it, and might have to depend on other societies for survival alongside other life’s requirements.

Taking a close view of the above exegesis, it’s needless to reiterate that any nation is supposed to take sciences very seriously as if its whole life depends on it.

It, therefore, becomes so pathetic and mind-boggling when realized that Nigeria as a country is being taken aback by her trustees regarding acquiring of science knowledge, or its implementation.

The lingering anomaly, which calls for great concern, can be observed in virtually all existing citadels of learning across the federation regardless of level, ranging from primary to tertiary.

In our primary schools, the pupils are now invariably preoccupied with the notion that science subjects, such as Mathematics and Basic Science, are very difficult to understand owing to the orientation they met in the system. This appalling phenomenon is usually occasioned by the mode of teaching of the class teacher.

Sometimes, fear would be inculcated into the pupils’ mindset by their teacher who would, rather than participate in the actual teaching as expected, take much time to lay uncalled emphasis on why the pupils should see science subjects as tough and different from others. By doing so, the affected pupils would live to consider sciences as monsters, thus would prefer to pay more attention to arts or other available areas.

In the secondary schools, only a few students currently see subjects like Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry as friendly. Those who detest these subjects had nurtured their mentality or psyche with the view that sciences generally are only meant for a certain group of select individuals.

Those who mistakenly chose to be in the science department, in the long run, tend to lose interest in the field and would want to dissociate themselves from the circle.

Funnily enough, in most cases, students would choose to be in the science department when they got to the senior section simply because some of their intimate friends or classmates had chosen to be in that field. This set of persons or learners is often known and addressed as “follow, follow” in Nigeria’s local parlance, and often becomes dropout as a result of inability to cope with the studies when the journey emerges.

This aspect of influence, as highlighted above, remains one of the major attributes of apathy noticed among various science students in most Nigerian secondary schools. It has lingered unabated, yet seems not unlike an endless bedbug.

Nowadays, virtually none pay good attention to the teachings of Pure Mathematics let alone Additional (Further) Mathematics. It’s worthy of note that virtually all existing science-oriented disciplines such as engineering, in the tertiary institutions, basically depend on the knowledge of Further Mathematics on their day-to-day thrive.

This has caused an enormous decline in the number of persons seeking to study engineering and other related courses. The few that secured admission to study the aforementioned discipline, perhaps due to their family background, usually fumbles as the journey progresses. This is so, because the study of engineering and its likes requires people with great passion and zeal as well as strong academic antecedents.

The way out from this conundrum entails three prime approaches. One, the various primary and secondary schools ought to endeavour to engage qualified teachers that would imbibe the required mindset and knowledge into the pupils and students, as the case may be.

Furthermore, guidance and counseling – that has almost gone into extinction in the Nigeria’s school curriculum – ought to be revived. A functional and viable mentorship mechanism would enable the learners to go for only the needful, or what would be suitable for their respective futures.

Parents and guardians, on their part, are expected to pay more attention to whatever their wards do as regards academics. Learning begins at home, hence the needed parental support mustn’t be overlooked.

Inter alia, governments at all levels among other relevant stakeholders should endeavour to provide the required facilities that would enable the affected people to appreciate science teachings. The management of the private learning institutions must also be mandated to follow suit.

For this growing apathy to become a thing of the past, every concerned stakeholder, as mentioned herein, must take into cognizance that science is and shall remain the only tool that can fast-track the anticipated economic diversification.