Gaining admission to universities in Nigeria requires success in the secondary school certificate examination. This requirement has driven university applicants to seek various methods to pass examinations conducted by the institutions established by government, hence the emergence of some centres which, for a fee, guarantee success in such examinations. Rotimi Ige, in this report, examines the problems posed by these wonder centres and the effects on the nation.SINCE independence, Nigeria, over the years, has invested a lot of resources in its educational sector. With the introduction of a harmonised 6-3-3-4 system (primary, secondary, university), the education sector heralded new teaching and learning techniques aimed at ensuring that the nation could boast of a sizeable generation of learned and trained individuals who are, in turn, expected to take over key sectors of the economy and help to put the country on the world map.Recognising the need to further improve on the sector, different governments have, over the years, approved various budgets and grants to it and also established more institutions of learning spread all over the country for easy access by the citizenry.The highest institution of learning is the university, where degrees are awarded up to Ph.D level. These degrees would, in the long run, determine how qualified an individual is adjudged to be and acquiring them becomes the priority for those who seek the benefits of western education. To gain admission into the universities, a candidate needs to succeed in certain examinations which put in place by the government so as to ensure that he/she is qualified to move on to the next level.The candidate needs to obtain a certificate called the West African School Certificate (WASC), which is proof that he or she has passed through primary and secondary school and can now head for the university.The establishment of examination bodies, the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and later the National Examination Council (NECO), means that the nations youths are expected to demonstrate their knowledge of a range of subjects, in which success opens the doors to any institution of higher learning of their choice.Consequently, the task posed to these youths is passing the examination. To a normal individual, you have to study to show that you could pass.However, generation after generation, and with waning reading attitude among youths nowadays, people have devised various short-cuts to success.Some individuals have set up what is now referred to by many as wonder or magic examinations centres or wonder schools, where students are guaranteed success in certificate examinations. They are set up as schools of learning, coaching centres, exam centres etc. Once candidates are registered at such centres, the proprietors employ various methods to ease up the examination process and, in most cases, involve themselves in various malpractices, i.e. providing answers to such examinations to university applicants on or before the examination date, usually for an agreed amount.The incidence of examination malpractice, as promoted by such centres, has become so widespread that there is virtually no examination anywhere at all levels and outside the formal school system where there is not one form of sharp practice or the other. Seasons of examination malpractice are common everywhere and each witnesses the emergence of new and ingenious ways of cheating.The Examination Malpractice Act no. 33 of 1999 stipulates a minimum punishment of N50,000 and a maximum of five years imprisonment, without option of fine, for violators of the offences stipulated in the Act. The offences are: cheating at examinations, stealing of question papers, impersonation, disturbances at examination, obstruction of supervision, forgery of result slip, breach of duty, conspiracy and aiding, etc.Government, examination bodies, and other concerned citizens have made a lot of effort to forestall the incidence of examination malpractice and the problems associated with the conduct of examinations in Nigeria. Although the efforts seem to be yielding some results, yet examination malpractice still features prominently in the school system. In 2006, the Federal Ministry of Education blacklisted and derecognised 324 secondary schools across the nation as centres for conducting public examinations from 2007 to 2010.According to social critics, the phenomenon of examination malpractice seems to be aggravated by the large scale and shameful involvement of dishonest and greedy teachers, school heads, parents and all those who take part in examination administration. The prominence assumed by this malady in the educational system has become a source of concern to stakeholders in the education industry. The examination process has become endangered to the extent that certification has almost lost its credibility in the country. Certificates no longer seem to reflect skill and competence.Accusing fingers are, therefore, often pointed at teachers, school heads, parents, students, examination officials, security agents, and most especially, the coaching centres which are supposed to help students to prepare for examinations, as agents of examination malpractice in the school system.These examination centres now litter the country and continue to churn out different sets of half-read scholars, thereby cheapening the educational sector in the nation, and encouraging the youth to be lazy and virtually professionally unemployable.Mrs. Bolarinwa Badmus, a teacher, decried the sudden popularity of these wonder centres, describing it as a ploy by certain greedy educationists to make fast money. She said that these individuals were cashing in on the lazy attitude of youths to reading, selling success to them to their detriment. She said:Our children are no longer interested in studying because of these wonder schools. With the decentralisation of the examination process, anybody can just get accredited to conduct WAEC, NECO and GCE. They employ various dubious means to procure the examination questions before the due date and pass them on to their students. They, sometimes, solve the questions beforehand and dictate them to the students on examination day. Expectedly, this has led to the upsurge in mediocrity and ensured a high level of illiteracy among Nigerian youths.The government must stop all these private establishments immediately if we want to raise the standard of education in our country.Mohammed Muktar, who owns an examination coaching centre, in Kaduna State, debunked the allegation, stressing that what was used in coaching prospective university applicants was past questions from the examination bodies. He said that because students nowadays were somewhat lazy about studying, educators had to devise methods to push them (the students) to give some attention to their books.The reading culture among the youth nowadays is very pathetic. All they do is watch television and they want to become entertainers. We, as educators and parents, have to help them no matter what, hence the establishment and patronage of these examination coaching centres.Though it is true that some centres engage in various malpractices to help ease the burden on the students, it remains a condemnable act. In my centre, for instance, we use past questions to coach our students and even go as far as engaging the services of a guidance counsellor so as to help our students to know what their talents are and how they can be nurtured and groomed, he said.However, Godson Ihenacho, an engineer, thinks differently. He believes that the parents of exam candidates are mostly to be blamed.Parents are to blame. Most of them work all the time and have little time for their wards, especially the ones in secondary schools. Such parents would suddenly realise that their wards are in SS3, ready to write WAEC and NECO, and that is when they will start running helter skelter, looking for how to help their children to pass the exams.Most Nigerians believe that it is a thing of shame for their wards to write examinations more than once and since they would have to wait for almost a year to write another one, they seek out these magic centres so as to give their wards an advantage. Such parents are the ones who would pay obscene amounts to gain the advantage and, as such, encourage these magic centres to flourish, he said.Tolu Adeyemi, a pharmacist, blames the examination bodies for the phenomenon. She lamented the general low educational standard of graduates, attributing it to the laxity of the bodies in checkmating the bad eggs amongst them who release or leak the question papers before the due dates.In trying to evaluate the damage that examination malpractices, as practised by these centres, to the nation, Jimoh, Basil Olatunbosun of the Department Of Educational Foundations and Management, Faculty Of Education, Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, described the Nigerian education system as being largely certificate-oriented. To him, so much value and emphasis are placed on certificates instead of knowledge, skills and competence.He said, According to Nwandiani (2005), the market place value and reward for the level and face value quality of certificates promote tendencies for, and acts of, cheating in the process of certification. Many school leavers and dropouts have certificates without knowledge and skills. Most of the social maladies like the manufacturing and sale of fake drugs by pharmacists, collapse of buildings, massive fraud in banks and miscarriage of justice are consequences of over emphasis on certificates. And if this trend is allowed to continue, the country will end up with doctors who cannot differentiate between vein and artery, lawyers who cannot differentiate between an accused person and the complainant and teachers who may not be able to spell the names of their schools correctly (Orbih, 2006). It is high time the nation stopped taking certificates no more as passports to jobs or higher education; more emphasis should be placed on competence and skill acquisition. The implication of this is that assessment of students should no longer be based on one almighty examination; rather, it should be continuous, from the very first day at school to the very last day.As things stand, social watchers have emphasised that the onus is on the government to clamp down on these centres and, indeed, individuals who encourage cheap success at the detriment of the nation by derecognising them, enforcing a jail sentence, among other measures. By so doing, they argue, the standard of formal education would be once again raised, and Nigerian scholars would ,once again, be able to stand on the world stage with their foreign counterparts.Happily, the Federal Government recent took a positive step by blacklisting these miracle centres.
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