Use Of English 2007 Jamb Examination

In time past in Nigeria, being a secretary was perceived with utter disdain by many people. Other professionals such as teachers, lawyers, engineers, surveyors, estate officers and architects were revered. Many issues readily come to mind concerning the old perspective of secretaries as professionals.

One, they were regarded as people with little or no education. Indeed, many of them were said to be mere typists who learnt how to punch keys on the typewriter. They hardly had any formal education but obtained doubtful certificates. This was made possible because anyone could easily learn to be a typist under the shade of a tree or in a personal office of a retired secretary or a chief typist from any business organization. As long as a short piece of work could be typed almost accurately and in record time, one then became a secretary. This unrealistic practice – to call an unqualified person a secretary – might have been introduced and sustained by people who did not know who a secretary was. The educated secretaries obtained a minimum of the Ordinary National Diploma (OND) or its equivalent from institutions in and outside Nigeria, particularly Great Britain, Canada or the United States of America.

Two, they were mostly women and very few male secretaries, who suffered more humiliation than their female counterparts. They were regarded as men who did not succeed in life and did the work that normally women were supposed to do.

Three, and deriving from the second reason, secretaries were, as a matter of fact, very close to their bosses. Most people, including husbands of secretaries, regarded such a mode of interaction as tempting – a kind of constant closeness which might engender a deliberation or unintentional amorous relationship between superior and subordinate officer. Quite often, such a situation could not be ruled out when body contacts was established inadvertently or deliberately between two people of opposite sex especially when either one or both people were attractive and attracted to each other.

Moreover, we often talk of the devil and the havoc he is capable of causing in the lives of people, particularly the unguarded ones.

In today’s world, these points of view concerning secretaries are fading fast. Now, there is a clear distinction between a typist and a secretary. Modern secretaries are trained in polytechnics and universities. Gone are the days when secretaries were taught only the art of punching the typewriters and various filling systems. They are also encouraged to take training courses other than secretarial duty. Many secretaries have had their training in faculties of business administration, law, art and mass communications of universities. They take relevant courses in administration and other social science departments that enhance their personality, carriage, interpersonal relations and office management.

Obviously, secretaries, including the male ones, are more important and well respected today than in the past.

While trying desperately to cope with the scourge of the dreaded HIV/AIDS virus, the human race was once again beset with the problem of grappling with fast-spreading and lethal pandemic called bird flu. Also called avian influenza, bird flu’s vicious strain, H5NI, was spread from birds to humans and could be as deadly as HIV/AIDS. The pandemic had ravaged many countries in Europe, Asia and Middle East resulting in a high death toll in livestock, but as yet with a few human casualties.

As the pandemic made its steady spread, there was the fear that if it ever gets to Africa, the consequences would be devastating in view of the continent’s lack of infrastructure and money to keep it in control. This fear was consequent upon African countries’ unenviable response to emergencies in the past, like drought in some sahelian countries or flooding along the coast. It was against this frightening background that many Nigerians were thrown into panic following the announcement on Wednesday the 8th of February, 2006, that the bird flu had indeed entered Nigeria.

The announcement itself was a sequel to the death of a large number of birds in a farm in Kaduna State whose samples were diagnosed at the National Veterinary Institute, Vom, Plateau State, and confirmed at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Diagnostic Centre in Rome, Italy. Several follow-up actions had been taken to try and halt the spread of the virus in the country, such as the immediate quarantine of the affected farms, the killing and disposal of all infested and surviving birds in affected farms and the restriction of movement of people in and outside such farms. Commendable as these measures were, many Nigerians still dreaded the chicken and had already excluded its meat from their menu. As a result, poultry farmers in Nigeria were counting their losses instead of producing more protein and smiling to the bank with good sales.

To return to the status quo ante and restore the confidence of Nigerians in poultry products, additional measures were suggested, namely the close monitoring of migratory birds which flock into the country at different times of the year, the proper caging of all free-range birds and appropriate sanctioning of defaulting owners, not restricting the monitoring of poultry farms in the country to the urban centres only, the upward review of the compensation paid to farmers whose birds had been destroyed to cushion the effects of their loss, the strict enforcement of the restriction on the importation of poultry products and, lastly, the leadership demonstrating, by example, that it was safe to eat poultry products by serving them at dinners and banquets during state functions.