Right now, a big battle is raging between the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, and some State Governments, where WAEC has deliberately withheld the results of the candidates from the States whose governments had enrolled them on credit for the last May/June examinations.
By Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan
In whichever direction we look, we see the Nigerian student short-changed. He is thoroughly repressed and at times, he becomes an endangered species.
He can only cry out at a cost that is too high to pay – the moment he is labeled outright recalcitrant, he is doomed; or he could flunk all the courses of those he raises his voice against.
On those rare occasions when the teachers are not on strike, the student’s results are being withheld.
Meanwhile, the student is silently compelled to pay all the fees that are considered repugnant in the outside world. In essence, the Nigerian student soon finds that he must work twice as hard to be half as good as his contemporaries elsewhere.
The student in the public school system knows when he is matriculating but he can never tell when he will graduate, no thanks to the incessant strikes obtainable in the system.
It is not unusual for a good student who goes into the University for a four-year Course to limp out after more than seven years.
Lately, some concerned Nigerians cried out against the prohibitive cost of procuring hand-outs from lecturers.
Ostensibly, the hand-out system was abolished. The lecturers needed just enough time to re-strategize and come out with something different.
Overnight, printers went to work and compiled the hand-outs into pamphlets (oops, textbooks), which every student passing through the lecturer’s course must buy.
Even those who re-sit the paper must buy a second copy of the book. The books cannot be obtained in any bookshop.
The lecturer’s Secretary meticulously compiles the names of all those who have bought the book. In the marking of the exam script, the lecturer places the list alongside the scripts and the fact of your buying the book earns you 10 marks automatically.
Those pamphlets/textbooks go for between N7, 000-10,000. It is simply the examiner’s market!
As if this is not enough, other external forces must bring their heavy weight to bear on the student.
Right now, a big battle is raging between the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, and some State Governments, where WAEC has deliberately withheld the results of the candidates from the States whose governments had enrolled them on credit for the last May/June examinations.
Apparently, during the electioneering campaigns, politicians promised heaven and earth, including the payment of examination fees for their students.
WAEC went ahead and enrolled the students. The politicians were applauded. But since then, many State Governments have been on respiration, gasping for breath, even unknown to them if they are still alive.
The Federal Government has just offered them a little life-line to be able to pay some arrears of long outstanding salaries to their workers. In such a situation, who would be talking of faraway WAEC?
WAEC knew, or it ought reasonably to have known, that it was taking a risk when it decided to enroll those students on credit.
It could as well have insisted on payment up-front from the States. WAEC has no justification, whatsoever, to turn round and visit the delinquency of those States on the innocent students. Must the sins of the father always be visited on the son?
WAEC has a range of option on how to get its money. It could go to court to seek an order to enforce payment or, as a last resort, it could seal up the Government Houses of the affected States. But by all means, let the students’ results be released pronto!
Enough of this misplacement of aggression! The time to get the results is now! Those who passed need the results to process the ongoing admissions into higher institutions; and those who failed should immediately begin to prepare for the next one.
Before now, we deluded ourselves into thinking that we had arrived at the stage where we could approach our educational system through the civilized continuous assessment but because of the inherent tardiness in the system, we are faced once more with the process of galloping through by single end-of-session examinations.
Each time teachers return from their long strike, they announce to the students that examinations start the following week.
As the final hour approaches, crammers cram with the aim of pouring everything down for the lecturer. Breakdowns occur, sometimes followed by insomnia, and in extreme cases, suicide.
Now, the examination is taken and the student’s academic trial is over. Prosecution, defense and judgment are all now left in the hands of the examiner. Essentially, examinations are the control centers for the manipulation of the lives of students.
Blocking is a permanent feature with many lecturers. The aphorism is: Why kill yourself when you can buy the marks? The Class Rep openly collects the “premium” of N20,000-50,000 per student on behalf of the mercenaries and once your name is on the list, at least your ‘C’ is assured.
Our examinations can be attacked from two vantage points – reliability and relevance. When some universities have 30 percent failure rates and others 3 percent rates, the failure in one university could easily have been a huge success in another.
The wide fluctuations between failure rates indicate that our examination system is simply a process of random selection.
But the Nigerian student must be liberated! There must be a rational system of assessment, ranging from term papers to regular quizzes on subjects already taught so that final examinations could only operate as minimum incentives to construct tunnels of knowledge leading to intrinsic interest in education and one’s work.
Nothing here vitiates the fact that there are some upright, God-fearing lecturers around but in the main, ours is still largely a system of “All Chiefs, no Indians,” where we have a multiplicity of full-time professors, a bulk of whom may be paid to be idle.
A more efficient and cost-effective system would be one predominated by adjunct lecturers who must constantly strive to sustain their relevance. Such would fear strikes like plague. This, we recommend!
Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan is a public affairs analyst and Chairman, Board of Directors, Edo Broadcasting Service. He can be reached at: joligien@yahoo.com
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