CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
There is no doubt that in many organizations be it private or public sectors, secretaries and computer operators are mistakenly ignored or misunderstood to mean the same thing. However, earlier the role of a secretary was limited to notes from their heads, typing and storing information. Perhaps with the advent of technology in companies and offices, secretarial duties have extended to things that were meant for the professional and managerial staffs. The secretary that organizations are seeking in today’s time should not only have clerical skills and administrative skill alone but also cooperate governance, security laws, and capital market.
As it is today technology has affected every aspect of secretarial work from the organization of document, sorting and storing of document.
Aku (2004) informs that the basic secretarial functions of collecting, transferring, processing and transmission of information allows themselves to computerization. Consequently, the most works carried out by the professional secretary in the office are now being handled more speedily and in a better way with the use of computer.
Hill (2004), A secretary is someone who receives executive and company officials, clerical duties and keep personal records, read and sort, organize incoming mails, make and answer phone calls.
Assessing the performance of professional secretaries and computer operators requires proper check and change to ascertain he caliber of each.
Performance as define by Wynel (2010) as a systematic description of job relevant strength and weaknesses within and between employees. Which also means that performance evaluation is a review of the employee’s performance based on the agreed objectives. As performance determines output in an organization, the output of a secretary can be observed from the duty performed and how specialized one is in his or her functions.
The computer operators who obtains diploma or certificate course in computer training is mistaken for secretaries as there are minor similarities in their duties which are typing of documents, receiving and sending of mails, which are temporary duties performed by the computer operators.
According to Suleiman (2000), a computer operator is someone who requires the knowledge and practice of computer appreciation and operations, he is only knowledgeable in operation of the computer and how to manipulate it. Most people lack the typing skills as well as the techniques for standard production of  documents.
Suleiman (2000) also define the duties of a computer operators as the duplication of duties by computer operator. He adds that because the computer operators can manipulate the computer does not mean that they are secretaries. This is difficult to identify professional secretaries and computer operators, because the computer operator tends to perform better than some professional secretaries in organizations Ball (2001) to them as long as you are under a typewriter, you are a typist; they ignore the facts that there are distinctive features of the two profession in terms of skill, qualifications, duties, responsibilities and remuneration. This wrong perception or impression has permitted the general public and a great percentage of the public sees the secretarial position as nothing but mere typist who are trained from business centers after undergoing some few months of training in typing from street business schools, and factors that hinders their promotion both as secretaries and computer operators.
This explains why many students are reluctant to take the course of secretarial studies as a profession in spite of the fact that secretarial position is crucial and important to organization just like any other position. It is against this background that the researchers sees this trend as an empirical problem worthy of investigation.