Adeogun Oluwakayode calls readers to ponder on the evident instances of examination malpractices in the 2018 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) as an attempt to sabotage the future.
Recent findings have shown that students in Nigeria are now being offered answers to the on-going West African Examination Council (WAEC) questions hours before the exam papers are written on several websites and blogs.
At least, no fewer than four websites are advertising the availability of exam questions and answers before the paper begins.
These online portals gave students information on how to view these answers, giving them the option of either receiving the answers as text messages or passwords to specific areas of their websites where full answers are obtained.
One of such website advertised that students should come and get answers to Mathematics questions (a paper that was written on Thursday, April 21, 2018).
Two weeks ago, I posed as a student needing answers. I was told that answers via SMS would cost N800 while a password which would require logging on to the website would cost N500.
Examcrown published the answers of some papers on its site days before the exam is written.
For instance, Government paper 1 and 2 slated for Monday, April 23, 2018, had answers to the questions published on the site on Saturday, April 21, 2018.
Waecexpo too has been taken down probably because of the allegations against them. When I visited the site to get information about how the site peddles exam questions and answers, the site seems to have been shut down as the site links about ‘exam expo’ leads to a page about money and business.
Why are we so messed up as a country? Who are these Nigerians who are destroying this system for pecuniary gains? Aren’t they the same Nigerians who complain daily of the state of this country? Aren’t they the youth who should be the future of this country? The same young people who cry daily of how our father’s generation failed us?
The rot in education is particularly sad because it has ripple effects, spreading across all sectors. Imagine students using these sites to get eight distinctions and 350 so they can go study medicine and surgery to become doctors. Imagine them wanting to become engineers, scientists, lawyers, etc. They will most likely have to oil their way through school and come out deficient in whatever fields they find themselves in…even with great results. Are our exam bodies aware of these sites?
Unarguably, examination malpractice has come to be a monster among us, and poses a very serious threat to educational standards and credibility of certificates awarded in Nigeria. Examination malpractice should be the concern of every well-meaning Nigerians, and all hands must be on deck to curb this menace.
Teachers in particular who prepare children for examination and their future, and who are invigilators most of the times have the key to curbing this menace.
Until teachers rise up with the support of school administrators/proprietors and parents, against examination malpractice, this monster, will continue to loom in our midst, destroy our fabric gradually, and violently consume us ultimately. We must not allow this, to happen! All the stakeholders in the school system and everyone in the entire nation should rise up to wage a relentless war on examination malpractice.
Mr Adeogun Oluwakayode writes from Lagos.
