354THE EFFECT OF WEAK FOUNDATION IN THE LEARNING AND PASSING OF MATHEMATICSWithout the knowledge of Mathematics, Nigeria’s dream of becoming one of the 20 most developed economy by the year 2020 may remain elusive. This research is aimed at studying the problems facing students of Nigeria Polytechnics (foundation of science and technological development) on reasons for poor performance in Mathematics and the genesis of these problems.200 samples were selected from first year (ND 1) students from four Schools (Faculties) in the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti. A multi-stage clustered sampling method was used in selecting the samples. 10 questions covering different aspects of Junior Secondary School Certificate Examination syllabi and 10 for WASSCE were administered to the sampled students. The result shows that the mean score for JSS questions was 10.425 (34.75%) out 0f 30; the mean score for SSS questions was 6.87 (22.9%) out of 30; and the mean score for average was 8.6475 (28.825%). Using one-sample test, all these scores were found to be significantly difference from 30 and 15 while only score for JSS was significantly different from 10. It was also found that there was a moderate positive correlation between score in JSS and score in SSS; there was a high correlation between scores obtained for JSS & SSS and the average score.crispino@unicz.itResearch5112015Mathematics,Weak Foundation,PerformanceAdaraniwon A.O,Adetunji A.ADepartment of Mathematics and Statistics, Federal Polytechnic, Ado - Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria.,Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Federal Polytechnic, Ado - Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria.