Influence Of Guidance And Counselling In Career Choice Of Secondary School Students
[EKITI LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF KWARA STATE]

Those that discover the best career for themselves are those who have an accurate understanding of their talents and weaknesses, the professional opportunities available to them and confidence in their decisions. For some, it takes years of experience and exposure to different careers to find the best fit (Hewitt, 2011).
    Market conditions affect the opportunities available in any particular field. For example, during the golf rush of the mid-19th century, there were many opportunities for gold winners in California and those who provided services to them. After that boom ended, however, jobs for gold miners dried up rapidly, closing off that career often for all but the most committed. Computer buffs had few job opportunities in the 1970s, but by the late 1990s the demand for programmers was insatiable (Hewitt, 2011).
Guidance and Counselling in Nigeria
    Although, Aluede, Egbule and Okorodud (1988, as cited in Aluede, 2000) had observe that guidance and counselling service is a relatively new educational delivery service in Nigeria’s educational system, one may today be tempted to think differently because any child born in 1959, the year guidance and counselling is known to have begun in Nigeria (Ipaye, 1983, as cited in Aluede, McEachern and Kenny, in Press), would no longer be regarded a an adolescent or a youth he/she could even be a grand parent, who would be full of all maturity and experience to be expected to play very vital role in the society.
    Several events led to the institutionalization of guidance and counselling in Nigerian school system. Most prominent was the efforts of a group of Catholic nuns at the St. Theresa’s’ College, Oke-Ado Ibadan. The catholic nuns developed a career workshop for all the school’s graduating students during the 1959 academic session especially in the area of subject selection and job search (Aluede, 2000; Iwuama, 1991). A major outcome of the workshop was the distribution of the much needed career information that enabled 54 out of the 60 graduating students to gain full employment upon their graduation (Ipeye, 1983).
    The workshop on guidance and counselling held at the comprehensive high school, Aiyetoro in 1963, where Mr. R.O. Rees delivered a paper titled “The role of guidance counselor in a comprehensive high school was also instrumental to the emergence of guidance and counselling in Nigeria. So, was the book written by Mr. C.I. Berepiki entitled, an approach to guidance in schools this book inspired the Federal Government of Nigeria to develop a workshop on guidance and counselling in schools. Through these efforts, the federal government was able to appreciate the role guidance and counselling needed to play in the nation’s overall development that later motivated the Federal ministry of Education to appoint Mr. C.I. Berepiki to take full charge of the co-ordination of school guidance and counselling services in Nigeria’s school system (Odedunmi, 1985).
    Another force that led to the emergence of professional counselling in Nigeria has to do with the events that cropped up after the Nigerian civil war (July, 29, 1967- January 15, 1970). At the end of the civil war, there arose the dire need to rehabilitate the war victims. The post-war social, political, economic, religious and educational problems, which students, workers and the general public had to face, become enormous such that the less trained career masters/mistresses could not cope. This necessitated a very high demand for guidance counselors who were expected to provide veritable counselling interventions in the rehabilitation of the war victims (Egbule, 1997 as cited in Iwuama, 1998). One approach then was for the Federal Government of Nigeria to grant scholarship to most candidates who desired to pursue masters’ degree in guidance and counselling in any Nigerian Universities.
    The introduction of the new National Policy of Education in Nigeria (commonly referred to as the 6-3-3-4 system of education) for the whole country in 1977, with major revision in 1981, which had among its features, the introduction of a new educational focus for the primary and secondary levels of education also influenced the, emergence of guidance and counselling in Nigeria. This policy was a major break away from the existing educational policy that was bequeathed to the nation by the British colonial masters at independence. Under the previous arrangement, secondary schools students were expected to spend five years in the secondary school. In addition, the curriculum tended to emphasis much of liberal type of education. But the new policy extended the number of years in secondary school from five years to six years. If further decided secondary school education (where the student was expected to spend three years) and the senior secondary school level (where the student was expected to spend the remaining three years.