IT is said that our children are our future. Another such saying is the one that describes the children and youths of today as the leaders of tomorrow. What it means is that whatever upbringing we give the children of today determines the kind of future we are going to have. In other words, as we make our bed…
Now, read the stories that follow and tell me the kind of future we are laying out for ourselves in this country!
‘Yesterday, my son came back from his WAEC examination, but something was different. Normally, when he returns from school, there’s always something to talk about, how the paper went, which questions were difficult, who forgot their calculator, or even the usual laughter that comes with being a teenager.
‘But yesterday, he was quiet. Too quiet. As a mother, I immediately knew something was wrong. I asked him, ‘How was your Physics paper?’ He looked at me and said, ‘It wasn’t fine.’ I was confused! My son had prepared for this exam. I had watched him stay up late, reading. I had seen him sacrifice his playtime, endure power outages, and study under conditions many adults would struggle with.
‘So I asked again, ‘What happened?’ The answer shattered me. ‘Mummy, the invigilators said we should pay ?5,000 each or our papers would not get to the marking centre.’
‘For a moment, I thought I heard him wrongly. ‘What do you mean?’ He explained that the students were told to contribute money. Their principal reportedly had to beg for the amount to be reduced to ?3,000. Some students had no money and had to borrow from friends. Others were frightened that refusing to pay would affect their results.
‘Then came the statement that left me speechless: ‘They said for Mathematics and English, there will be no negotiation.’ I felt sick.
‘Imagine being a child. You spend months preparing for one of the most important examinations of your life. You wake up before dawn to read. You attend extra lessons. Your parents struggle to pay school fees and buy textbooks. Then, on the day of the examination, instead of being encouraged to believe in your abilities, you are made to believe that money matters more than preparation!
‘What exactly are we teaching these children? That hard work is useless? That success is for sale? That corruption is the real examination they must pass? I was furious and asked what the school authorities were doing about it.
‘My son said their proprietor claimed he had already paid over ?350,000 since the examinations began and could no longer continue carrying the burden alone. And that’s when reality hit me.
‘This problem is bigger than one student. Bigger than one school. Bigger than one examination centre.
‘We are witnessing the gradual destruction of the values we should be teaching the next generation. We tell our children to study hard. We tell them honesty pays. We tell them integrity matters. But the system keeps showing them the opposite.
‘How do you convince a child that education is the key to success when the adults in charge of education appear to be selling the lock? How do you tell a student to believe in merit when corruption is staring them in the face inside an examination hall?
‘Today, my heart aches not only for my son but for every child sitting in those examination rooms. For the brilliant student whose parents cannot afford extra money. For the honest student who just wants to pass through hard work. For the child who may eventually conclude that reading is pointless because everything has a price.
‘This is how dreams die. Not always through failure. Sometimes through disappointment. Sometimes through the moment a young person realises that the adults entrusted with their future are the very ones teaching them that integrity doesn’t matter.
‘And perhaps the saddest part is that when I shared this experience, another parent simply shrugged and said: ‘That’s normal.’
‘Normal? Since when did exploiting children become normal? Since when did intimidating students become normal? Since when did corruption in an examination hall become normal?
‘If this story is true across many centres, then we should all be worried. Because the greatest tragedy is not the money being collected. The greatest tragedy is the message being passed to an entire generation.
‘A generation that is watching. A generation that is learning. A generation that may one day become exactly what we are teaching them to be. The Ministry of Education, WAEC, and every relevant authority must investigate these allegations and take decisive action.
‘Our children deserve examination halls where their knowledge is tested, not their ability to pay. Nigeria cannot build a better future while teaching its young people that corruption is the price of opportunity.
‘Our children deserve better. And we must stop pretending that this is normal.’ – #annejenake.
One of the comments that followed this exposé was from Adeola Soetan, erstwhile students’ leader in his university days at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He said: ‘WAEC, take note. Although examinations for sale are not new, it’s becoming a feast of cheating now in public and private schools. Private schools cheat more and (are) involved in exam malpractice to sell their schools. The sad reality is that most of these cheating proprietors, proprietresses, principals, teachers and WAEC officials are practising Christians and Muslims. Religion is indeed a big scam. A ‘boju-boju, oloro nbo’ stuff. ‘Kuru-kere, kuru-kere on Friday to mosques and kuru-kere, kuru-kere on Sunday to the church! Many school proprietors and principals go on pilgrimage to Mecca and Jerusalem for nothing.’
You will be mistaken if you think it is only WAEC examinations that are involved; NECO, too, is not spared from my own investigations. This rot, widespread, is fast becoming the new normal, as they say.
One commentator said it was because of this malaise that one-time Lagos State ‘action governor’, Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande (LKJ), cancelled private primary and secondary schools in the state.
Another said he abandoned teaching altogether a decade ago because he did not want to be part of the ‘entrenched malpractice system in virtually all schools!’ So the malaise is not a new phenomenon!
Yet another commentator suggested that this exposé should trigger a debate. Let this, then, be the trigger!
My own independent investigations reveal that it is not only when secondary school students are writing WAEC and NECO examinations that the schools are extorted by supervisors sent from WAEC and NECO offices; examination malpractice and extortion also take place when primary school pupils are writing common entrance examinations into secondary schools! Just imagine that!
A school principal said he was pissed off by the impunity of a WAEC supervisor. ‘She commanded us as if we were under her. She demanded what she wanted and we begged and begged before she accepted what we could raise. After that, she threatened not to sign the OMR until each student parted with ?500.00.’ She reportedly said she had been lenient enough – that she could have demanded as much as ?3,000.00 per student!
I spoke to some invigilators and supervisors and their excuse: When they return to base, the ‘Custodian Officers’, as they are called, always demand, ‘What did you bring for us?’
Corruption struts in the open. Bribes are demanded brazenly. Bargains are conducted in the open – within the hearing distance of students and pupils! Reports made to the appropriate authorities do not yield dividends, further emboldening the corrupt elements.
As they say, if you cannot beat them, join them! So, in many schools, teachers lobby to go on invigilation/supervision of examinations not because of the stipends they are paid but because of the opportunity to extort money from students, parents and consenting school authorities alike.
School authorities that frown at these practices said they were helpless because appropriate authorities have not acted on reports made in the past. As a result, WAEC and NECO officials are emboldened to continue to perpetrate their odious acts. WAEC and NECO officials hold the yam and they also hold the knife. It is their reports that their offices would accept and act upon. Any school indicted for exam malpractice – even where none existed – is made to pay steep penalties, depending on the number of subjects involved, for three consecutive years.
Matters are made worse for such schools if students are actually caught cheating! The WAEC and NECO supervisors take advantage and pile misery upon such schools. But which is worse, cheating students or brazenly corrupt public officials ruining our tomorrow?
Another angle to the rot – which the outgoing JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, had repeatedly drawn attention to – is that parents are also involved. One of the invigilators I interviewed recounted how some parents rained insults on him because he refused to allow them to pass answers to their pupils writing common entrance examinations. ‘They threatened to beat me up,’ he said.
Ex-President Muhammadu Buhari once said if Nigeria does not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria. If we have nothing good to say of Buhari, at least we benefitted from that! Corruption is not only killing Nigeria, it is also killing its future.
Will our leaders act to stem the tide? I have no confidence they will! Their children go to school elsewhere. They are also the proverbial horse running ahead, which the pack imitates.
Says Karl Marx (in ‘The German Ideology’, 1845): ‘The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.’ Can a corrupt ruling class tame corruption?
Going by the harm we are inflicting on the leaders of tomorrow, I have no assurance, not any longer, that this country’s tomorrow will be alright. If, truly, the youths of today are the leaders of tomorrow and our children are our future, then we are, with our own hands, destroying that future.
But let it be said, when the chickens come home to roost, that I spoke out. How about you?
If we are serious people, anyone involved in this type of criminal venture laying landmines and time bombs that will destroy our collective future deserves the death penalty. Unfortunately, experience teaches that we are not! I stand to be corrected!
When some other folks were laying the time bomb of Boko Haram and Fulani terrorists destroying us today, we kept quiet. Now that the chickens have come home to roost, we run helter-skelter. In the fullness of time, the consequences of the ongoing destruction, not just of our educational system but also of the morals of our younger generation, will be worse. You will say I said so!