I remember now; the day I visited a friend and met him writing O/Level paper and said, “My man, with a PhD in view what are you doing writing O/Level paper.
He laughed before asking me, “You are forgetting I am a poor secondary school teacher. My brother, this is how we earn the extra coins”.
“But how is theses helping your students …?”
“My brother who cares about the students? How much do government and their parents care about me?” He asked angrily.
“Okay, I get your point” I said running from a fight.
“Better, since they are too busy on their phones to read, I will read for them and get paid for it”.
This brings to mind what happened one two years ago.
We were on a bus from Bori. We could see so many young people and a handful of older ones
running around. Each time we got close to a secondary school building we see hives of anxious people
darting about with books.
Somebody asked what was happening and another answered, “our students are busy
writing their examination called the General Certificate of Examination”
“Is running around like market women in Oil Mill Market the way to write GCE papers?” the man asked.
“Sir, that is the way it is done in this era”, the other man replied. “That is how they all get the nine and ten alphas and credits at a sitting”.
“God forbid when such traders become the planners and rulers of our land. This is horrible”, the man lamented. “Where are the teachers and invigilators?”
Nobody told him the people he was asking about were busy in the game.
Just then the bus reached a junction and pulled off the road to drop some passengers. We saw another hive of students running about every direction. Here were the students of another school also doing it.
“When will this nonsense end?” The same man asked but this time nobody answered.
In my heart I answered, “when you, I and our children start doing the right thing. When we stop paying teachers to write for our children. When our children drop their phones and pick up their pens and papers”.
The way I see it, we need to tell our children to read, Stop aiding bribery and corruption in our capacities. We must have hunger for knowledge and stop buying certificates. With money students buy invigilators to come in with missiles (papers) or mercenaries (impostors) who write for the candidates. There are also the signing fees to be paid to the invigilators who are ready to collect.
The way Nigeria is going certificates would soon be bought and sold on the counter. Let’s pray exams remain supreme in our lives and not something to read about in some obscure history books. db.
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