MOST Nigerians are known for cutting corners, that is, getting something without having to follow due process or wanting to get it at the easiest means possible through crooked ways.
It cuts across all facets of human endeavour; from sorting lecturers for marks in the universities and other tertiary institutions to passing through the backdoors by most parents to secure admission for their children to study what they term juicy courses such children have the least or no fair or calling at all.
Some others pursue contracts they know they have not the working equipment to carry out such contracts. In terms of employment, people without the requisite qualifications are the first to be considered even when such vacant positions are widely advertised with the necessary qualifications spelt out, some influential persons and the advert placers still undermine them to do the contrary.
All these, among others, are indices to corrupt practices the country, Nigeria, and her people are deeply engulfed in its smoke.
Cutting corners has been largely responsible for the many ugly situations Nigerians are now facing in the country. From the production of half-baked graduates in nearly all academic disciplines, particularly the so-called juicy courses some parents see as it is either these courses or never for their children, down to the contracts handed over to an already known ill-equipped construction company manned by an emergency contractor without the technical know-how, to the breakaway, greedy Pastor without in-depth knowledge of the Bible who wants to be on his own claiming he has the calling of God, perhaps because the largesse from the church he is breaking away from is not getting to him as expected; and those who settle ladder-carrying casual staff of electricity distribution companies with peanuts in order not to have their light cut off for not paying the actual bills etc.
Many parents, in order to boost their unnecessary ego, resort to doing things that are highly inimical to the progress and development of the society. Because a child knows that no matter what, his or her parents will find all means possible to secure unmerited certificate for them either in West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE), National Examination Council (NECO), the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) etc, because of collaborations, different connivances from mostly teachers and parents, they remain far-distanced from their books, not making any attempt to study for an impending examination.
These children rollick and romp away with the precious time they would have used in studying.
A woman once shamelessly said that it was in her bid to answer Mama this and Mama that she decided to use all means possible to ensure that her four children were enrolled into the best juicy courses which two of the children, a boy and a girl, ended up not being able to make their mark as they later turned out to be human butchers in the name of being medical doctors; thus, bringing a smirch to the family name.
These two children who all passed through the medical profession without the profession passing through them, because of their highly pronounced naivety in the profession, were to confess later in their live that they were forced to study medicine by their mother even when their father protested the move because he knew their academic capabilities.
According to them, their arrangee mother was able to facilitate all the processes involved right from ensuring that they both got the O’level science subjects requirement for medicine, (even they have bias for the arts) down to securing their admission from two separate private universities. She did not stop at that as she made sure that all the examinations involved from year one to their final level in both universities were all adequately taken care of, had all their chances of tilting to outright failure and carry-over, plugged with good monies she doled out mercilessly to the authorities.
Their inadequacies would have been detected or rather were detected during their house manship, but being a smart lady so to speak, she was able to maneuver, using money, too much of which she had.
But the punishment she got was her failed bid to answer Mama Doctor as the one of the so-called human butchers of a medical doctor after killing two patients in the course of carrying out what medical experts called simple operation on them, had his practicing license withdrawn– the aftermath of a legal action instituted by the family of one of the killed patients which she (mother of the so-called doctor) tried by all means to ensure never saw the light of the day by preventing the bereaved family from jailing her son.
Following the confession of her son which implicated her medical doctor daughter, she also had her own license withdrawn.
Today, as I write this piece, the two so-called medical doctors are neither here nor there, as they now stand out like the bat that belongs neither to the sky nor the earth.
The two, as we learnt, are now into what is far from the medical profession. The girl, (now a woman), is married to a staff of the Ogun State judiciary, and is into fashion and design; while her brother, the ill-fated medical doctor, has a patent medicine store in Benin-city where some residents ignorantly refer to him as a doctor.
The other two children, she forced to study courses that were not their dream courses, were a bit luckier as they were able to measure up, graduating in the process as the real course of study they were deprived from studying by their mother, were somehow closely related to the course they were forced into.
Instead of encouraging her children she wanted to study medicine by enrolling them in a science-based school for proper preparation for her dream course for them, she decided to cut corners by buying them O’level- based science subjects certificate to be qualified to study medicine. Again, she went further to ensure they got admitted even if UTME detected otherwise for them in the end.
Now, many parents are lamenting the poor performance of their children in the immediate past UTME, blaming the mass failure on Joint Admission Matriculations Board (JAMB) which they accused of being responsible for the mass failure of UTME candidates.
The reason of their mass failure, according to some people who reacted to it, said most of the candidates that failed in the examination were responsible for their failure as many of them no longer read their books.
‘A situation where a student that has an impending examination keeps calling his teacher who is to write the examination for him, asking him ‘I hope you are reading? is to say the least, unfortunate.’ A respondent posited.
Even in higher institutions, some hungry and shameless lecturers allow sorting, encouraging students to sort them for undeserved marks. This allows laziness to creep into these sets of students who see no reason staying on campus not to talk of reading but rather go on flexing from one city to another.
This ugly development has led to the issue of half-baked graduates who can hardly defend the course they went to study in school. And its effect is all over the country in all aspects of our daily living. ‘That is why in some offices they that detect the pace hardly know the right and left of the subject matter they so claim to know’. Ucheonye Mario Keme pointed out.
Now, Nigeria is a country where many things are taken for granted. Important contracts that are supposed to be handled by well-established construction companies are handed over to wheel-barrow and shovel-carrying construction companies which jobs do not stand the test of time.
The first rain, on these roads contracted to these ill-equipped construction companies that are supposed to be tarring farm roads, peels off the crude tar as they lack solid layer. Thus, begins the emergence of pot-holes on these roads.
Because some government officials into this type of unpatriotic practice want easy approach to the job, and desire badly their own kick-back too, quality work on such jobs is compromised.
These contracts are awarded to their cronies, when it is not disguisedly awarded in the name of their own companies. When this happens, the jobs done are nothing to write home about.
‘It is the more reason why poorly delivered jobs are all over the country. Whether these set of our leaders have any feeling of shame in them, or see some good jobs other leaders that have the interest of the masses at heart do in their states, is a matter many are yet to contend with.’ Ucheonye Mario Keme pointed out.
He said because some leaders like cutting corners and avoid doing the needful, they keep on providing the masses, jobs that lack quality; saying that it is one reason projects executed keep resurfacing in the annual budget of some states as there are not delivered to specification and as such cannot stand the test of time.
