WEST AFRICAN EXAMINATION COUNCIL (WAEC); PARENTS, TEACHERS,
WAEC, STUDENTS AND AN EDUCATIONAL DECAY
I have written countless articles, features, done interviews,
spoke on occasions, seminars and what not, on our educational
sector. Truthfully I guess the only thing I have not done is to
pray and fast. Once or twice I have prayed, to fast would mean
crying wolf to those who believe that all is well in the
educational sector, people like the President, the Minister of
Education, the House Committee on Education, NUC, JAMB, WAEC and
all those education policy makers.
Only last month the West African Examination Council held its
annual ritual called the May/ June exams. And a day to one of
the papers, a particular subject was published on a national
daily newspaper. The exams still held the following day. I
cannot begin to imagine how may thousands of students saw the
paper, in a particular metropolis in Plateau, the photocopied
question paper was being sold for an “expensive” N10.00 (Ten
Naira only).
Shamefully I ask was it that the authorities in WAEC did not
hear, see or smell the leakage, No! No! No! Not even one staff
in the entire WAEC saw that newspaper. And then the exam still
held. Several weeks after the paper and some three other
subjects are being rewritten by candidates.
Still baffling is that no one has been fingered as being
involved or being behind the scam.
Where do those papers “leak” from? The Printers, the Teachers
who set the questions, WAEC staff or ghosts, maybe still angels.
For the printers, the printing of exam questions is supposed to
be a high-risk venture, which requires all the security one can
get. However I will hazard a guess that these questions are
printed under the Ojulegba Bridge in Lagos and distributed along
schools by gifted area boys.
For the teachers, they have claimed that even after they set
questions, WAEC always alters it, so they cannot even be sure of
what the final questions look like. Na wa I hear you the next
thing I would be told is that Jesus is a woman after all is that
not what the students write that make them record mass failure
in the Christian Religious Paper and for their Muslim
counterparts who are so sure that Mohammed was born in
Jerusalem. Same teachers who hang about exam venues or rather
exam hall windows throwing in missiles like the ones that
facilitated the capture of Saddam Hussein at the rate of ( if
you papa pay better money for this exam you suppose pass)
meaning services are rendered by these teachers on the bases of
the higher the pay the better the commitment.
On the part of the examining body WAEC, they let us know that
they posses staff of proven integrity. I hear you brother! No
one is a thief until he/ she is caught. I was told of a joke
that has been confirmed by a friend who just returned from
heaven that God has dismissed all the examiners that are
Nigerians in Heavens examining body for leaking papers on when
Jesus will come. How much more the Nigerians on earth…these
Staff who perpetuate these heinous crimes whether it is called
"expo" “ "mssiles", "leakages" or whatever.
If all these people are not culpable I will send my complaints
to God. For certainly the culprits must be ghosts or angels.
What do we really expect, if the music is sweet, the head, legs,
waist would all move. Forging, certificate racketeering,
falsification et al is not new neither is it news, so exam
leakages should not be serious. When parents connive with WAEC
officials, teachers, principals to buy exam papers, then we
should keep crying for ourselves.
Sometimes we open our mouth, pick our pen to write about
stealing, corruption in high places but we simply forget the
role we play as parents.
Fathers and mothers pay what we call mercenaries to write exams
for their kids, and wards, what do we expect? Buffoons in the
name of graduates leave our ivory towers year after year. If
you could not write a qualifying exam yourself or had to rely on
the paper that leaked what can you offer years down the lane.
Some one suggested that WAEC exams should be written online and
I smiled as I told my guest that you would then know that Bill
Gates is a Nigerian, the exams would be hacked by someone
somewhere somehow. Oh my beloved Nigeria!
To a salient issue is the WAEC exam or any exam at all, the true
test of knowledge? Is it not true that the Nigeria craze for
paper qualification has done the system so much harm, making the
desire for a pass an insatiable one. Most of the great minds,
we have and had were all never the pass nine subjects’ kind of
people.
I stand to be corrected that even WAEC itself as an examining
body has been contradictory in its results on several occasions
where very intelligent students by all standards fail papers and
dull students pass or is it cases that students to pass
Economics and fail Commerce, or pass English Literature and fail
English.
Talk about wonders, how a candidate keeps passing all his/her
papers yet fails English continually year in year out. Result
are seized and released anyhow.
These inconsistencies, no one has deemed it fit to explain. The
recent exam paper leakage has come and it is going like one of
those many issues on our geographical national map of scandals.
I make safe to suggest that it’s high time we retrace our steps.
Too much focus on the pass this exam syndrome has caused us.
When so much value is placed on a University qualification
rather than practical knowledge and hands on ability. Technical
ability, flair and natural talent is abandoned for the sake of
written exams. I also at this point suggest the introduction of
individual oral tests to determine University admission and
placement to curb this menace.
As long as the O/Levels as set by WAEC and other such bodies is
a requirement for University placement including a high JAMB
score, students, parents all connive to dance the if you cannot
beat them join them sound track.
This is part of our educational mess and the story gets worse.
May God help us.
