Stopping the educational decline

I am disheartened about the just released 2009 NECO results of Senior secondary students in Nigeria. According to sources (click here), only 1.8% [of 234,682 students ]made the requisite 5 credits subject pass (including in English and Mathematics) needed for higher degree study. In 2008, it was 27.64%.

That is a too wide chasm for students to have fallen through in one year. How could our secondary school education have declined so rapidly?