Abuja — FEDERAL Government has lamented the abysmal performance of students of Federal Government Colleges (FGCs) in the 2009 Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSCE), stating that the situation is unacceptable given that the schools ought to be role models to others.

Minister of state for Education, Hajia Ishatu Dukku who made this known over the weekend in Abuja while meeting with Principals of the Unity Colleges warned that sabotaging the good intention of government will be sanctioned.

Dukku also did not mince words in fingering the Principals for the near mass failure, telling them to accept responsibility for poorly preparing the students for the examinations.

The Minister said that henceforth, there would be strict supervision and monitoring of activities in the schools as those have been lacking in the past.

Dukku who made the disclosure at a meeting with the Principals of Unity Colleges in Abuja on Friday stated that: "I called the principals to brainstorm and find solution to the problems that necessitated the poor performance of our students in the recently released results of NECO and WAEC.

"These students performed abysmally poor and it will not be condoned. There will be sanctions for either the Principals or anybody found to be directly involved in the woeful performance of these students".

The minister attributed the failure to multiple examinations which are taken one after the other to lackadaisical attitude of students and disclosed that the ministry is considering conducting the examinations concurrently.

She said, "Supervision and monitoring has been absent in the past. The students seem to relax after taking exam examination before preparing for another examination and from the look of things, we are looking into the issue to see if we can run the examinations concurrently after all, we have the man-power to do that".

She urged the Principals to strive harder and return Unity schools to their original objectives of providing wholesome education; model to other schools in the nation; promotion of excellence in academic achievements and moral values as well entrench the values of patriotism, national unity and integration.

Also speaking, the Permanent Secretary, Prof. Dapo Afolabi who expressed disappointment with the level of performance of our students in the examinations said Nigerians naturally have above average Intelligent Quotentient (IQ) and have no excuse to perform poorly as the potential is there.

He attributed the problem of abysmal poor performance of students in the Unity schools to poor teaching materials, which he said are becoming substandard and poor preparation on the side of the students.

According to him, "the poor result we are seeing today is as a result of poor teaching materials, substandard infrastructures and poor preparation on the side of the students".

He said that even though the case is bad for now, with the huge amount of money government has spent recently on procurement of reading materials and training of teachers, he hoped that in the nearest future, the performance of the children would be better.

"Government in her effort at actualizing the dream of becoming one of the top twenty economies by the year 2020 have spent over N2bn to train teachers and just yesterday (Thursday), it flagged off the distribution of reading books worth over 4bn. We hope that in the next 2 to 3years, these children will be better", he remarked.

Investigations reveal that in the recently released result of unity schools students with Credit in English and Mathematics in the 2009 WAEC, thirty-right (38) colleges scored below 20% with six colleges scoring 0%.

Furthermore, Sixty-five (65) colleges scored below 20% in the NECO with nine (9) of them scoring 0% unlike the private schools that scored 44% in WAEC, 44% in NABTEB and 18% in NECO.