CHAPTER ONE
1.0    INTRODUCTION
1.1    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
        Secretaries as seen in the secretarial world and business organizations today, are faced with many problems and also have some prospects.
        A secretary according to Hornby (2001), “is an employee in an office who deals with correspondence, keeps records, makes arrangements and appointments for a particular member of the staff”
        The American Secretarial Association defined a secretary in the most acceptable way as – “an assistant to an executive, possessing a mastery of office skills and ability to assume responsibility without direct supervision, who displays initiative, exercises judgment and makes decisions within the scope of assigned authority.”
        A secretary    can also be defined as a person who maintains a high standard of confidentiality and a repository of information. Infact, there are numerous definitions of the word secretary as far as there are many authors. With the above definition in mind, one can easily see that the need for a secretary in any corporation cannot be overemphasized.
        A secretary is a major communicating link between the executive ad his associates, the office staff and the public. As a result of this important linking position, a secretary can play a vital role in helping to create and maintain a smooth running business office. Thus a secretary seen as the bedrock and image-image of any business organization.
        For a secretary to perform her functions efficiently and effectively, she must have undergone some educational training and obtained the basic office knowledge and skills to be efficient and effective on the job. A secretary is quite different from a clerk, a typist and other office workers.
        However, for one to qualify as a secretary, she must have taken courses in shorthand, typewriting, office practice, secretarial duties and must be fairly computer literate for easy adaptation in modern offices.  
        Shorthand and typewriting are the key working tools of a secretary and it is expected that any person who aspires to take up any secretarial post must have passed typewriting ad shorthand within the following speed range – 25-100 words per minute, 80-120 words per minute in typewriting and shorthand respectively.
        It is not uncommon to see people who have only passed typewriting at any of the recognized speeds without shorthand or those that have typewriting and shorthand skills are referred to as secretaries. These categories of secretaries are not qualified secretaries.
        Some of the certificates recognized  in our business organizations and of course our corporation for secretaries are – Royal Society of Arts Certificate, Pitman Certificate, Federal Technical College certificates, national Diploma certificate all in Secretarial field obtained in the Polytechnics, and Colleges of Technology. Bordus Diploma of Mc Cann Erickson Advertising once said, “professional training on a good secretarial course is the basic requirement for the would-be top secretary”. It will help her perform her duties efficiently and effectively.
        A close look at some selected public corporations like the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL) and National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) revealed a lot of problems and prospects of the secretarial profession. For instance, in Nigeria Telecommunications (NITEL), Enugu, the corporation stride towards meeting subscribers’ expectations has always bee made impossible by some of those problems inherent in the organization.
        In an attempt to remedy the problems in the organization, the Federal Government as well as the management of the corporation has introduced a lot of innovations for the effective functioning of the corporation. The former Post and Telecommunication (P & T) and the Nigerian External Telecommunication (NET) were incorporated into one department on January 1, 1985 and by June 1985, the department was split into NITEL and NIPOST  (Nigerian Postal Services).