Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has decried the mass failure of students of the state in the just-released 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME).
The governor attributed the development to poor knowledge of information communication technology (ICT).
AbdulRazaq said this in Malete, Moro Local Government Area at the seventh convocation ceremony of the Kwara State University (KWASU).
The governor who was represented by his deputy, Kayode Alabi, said: “Today, Kwara has regressed in many areas. We recently read about how several students from the state struggled with computer-based UTME, apparently resulting in mass failure among our children.
“This must be tackled immediately, if Kwara must compete in the 21st century economy dominated by ICT. How do we get our children to understand the ‘liberating and exploitative” powers of information in the digital age when they don’t even have the most basic knowledge of computer?
“Our administration is disturbed by the systemic problem in our education system, which manifested in the 2019 UTME. It is immaterial if there are other parts of Nigeria with a similar crisis. We, in Kwara, have a duty to roll back this abnormality in the most practical way.
‘We have a duty to ensure that the overwhelming majority of our children are given the opportunity to excel by having access to IT-enabled education.”
He hailed KWASU for “helping to redraw the map of Nigeria by gradually and in the most ambitious ways, bringing our state to national and global reckoning”.
“It is heart-warming to note that the institution is indeed punching above its weight in the way it has quickly established itself as a centre of academic innovation and excellence within 10 years of its founding,” he said.