BY BENSON OKOBI-ALLANAH
IT might sound odd, absurd and unbelievable to some people with conscience, but yet it happens all the time, some detected and some delivered undetected.
This page for now is dwelling on parents, teachers, brothers and sisters, undergraduates and other paid syndicates or mercenaries who write for children and wards during such qualifying examinations like Primary Six, WAEC, NECO and JAMB examinations.
Most of our national dailies have been awash with reports which we cannot readily lay our hands on due to time factorabout parents caught while writing exams for their children and wards; some other reports on paid teachers, mercenaries as well as brothers and sisters to those the exams are being written for, also caught in similar circumstance.
The question that often makes most minds punch bag of endless imaginations is how students whose school certificate examinations or JAMB were written for them by their parents, brothers and sisters, by their teachers and paid mercenaries who are mainly motivated by the desire to make money, with some of them known not to have the capacity and ability to even pass such exams, will be able to come when they get to higher institutions of learning which pose greater academic challenges.
A student who was doing her Houseman ship in a private hospital in Asaba, once confessed when her unpardonable inefficiencies were discovered by the Chief Medical Director of the hospital on how she was forced to read medicine against her wish by her mother whom she said wanted to be addressed as ‘Mama Doctor’’ because she had friends who were being addressed as such.
In that startling revelation, the young ‘doctor’ said her initial dream was to study Theater Arts because she was an arts student.
She said despite all she did to let her mother know that she was not interested, and the father’s insistence that she be allowed to study her choice course, Theater Arts, her mother refused, and went ahead to enroll her at a private university in the eastern part of Nigeria.
She went further to reveal how she spent six good years in the university under the cover of the university authorities, not writing exams, but being among the best students in each exam.
‘I will be served question papers without knowing what to write. The Lecturers will be telling me to be scribbling away, telling with their eyes, even when I don’t know what I was writing. Same thing was happening during practical. I was surprised at the end of the exam, I will pass. Little did I know that my mother was settling every one of the lecturers.’’
The cat was however let out of the bag when she went for Houseman ship and her deficiencies in the field of Medicine was detected.
This girl later went back to another university where she started studying her dream course after wasting seven good years in the university.
Today, she is made in that field her mother initially denied her studying.
O’level results were forged, giving her total of seven credits in all the critical science subjects required to be qualified to be admitted as a Medical Doctor.
Many other similar incidents were reported in the past (and still being reported) where students are being made to study courses they have the least bias for because their parents want them to study what they term juicy courses, like Medicine, Petroleum Engineering, Nursing and what have you.
In one of the recently conducted WAEC, a man was caught writing for his child, what a shame!
Many children of today no longer care to read because they know there must be someone out there to write their exams for them. They care less about the exam awaiting them. In the past, when you have an examination to write, for the serious-minded students, they burn the midnight candle, studying very hard to ensure that they pass their exams. Only few of them can be associated with such seriousness as majority of them fervently believe that going to school in this modern time is a scam. What a wrong impression they have formed about education!
A student, whose father was worried that after several attempts by his son to pass either WAEC or NECO exam failed, decided to do it himself for the son.
The son being a shameless child, each time he finds his father with his friends discussing, will ask his father: ‘Dad, I hope you know you have exam ahead waiting for you to write for me. You are here discussing with your friends instead of reading.’
The father will then give him restraining glance to avoid leaking the secret further. This is how spoilt the country in this part of the globe, is; and the extent some parents have degenerated to.
Many of the parents have thrown shame and caution to the wind. They no longer care what happens, what people will say concerning their unbecoming involvement in some ridiculous things they are not supposed to be found indulging in.
Various state governments at the local, state and federal levels having been kicking against examination mal-practice with little or no results achieved. Some schools had been barred from having any such qualifying examinations as WAEC and NECO being conducted in their schools as centers arising from some discrepancies found there during exams.
Miracle centers are now the in-thing; here at the centers, students are enrolled in order to get their results once, assisted by owners of such miracle centers.
Majority of students leave their schools in their final year to go and enroll in such miracle centers where they are assured of making their results at a sitting.
Parents, who like the short cut like their children, patronize such miracle centers all for the simple aim for their children to make their results once, thus, leading to inability to defend the various subjects they sat for.
All these criminal approach to acquiring certificates have led to producing half-baked graduates in the country today. Some politicians and businessmen now walk into any Ivory Towel with effortless easy to acquire PhD, and other certificates they prefer. That is why today, you see a Mechanical Engineer who passed through the four walls of a University or Polytechnic, not able to detect where the brain box is situated in a car or the name sounding strange to him? There are some Lawyers today, who cannot defend a case in the law court, or know how a court room looks like; but only just want to answer the name, ‘Barrister’, ‘Lawyer’; ambulance chasers of Lawyers. What a funny country we all found ourselves! Tufiakwa! Tufiakwa!! Tufiakwa!!!
