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Widespread digital cheating at the on-going Senior Secondary Certificate Examination organised and supervised by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) is raising dust regarding both the quality of students from Nigeria’s education system and its impact on the quality of future workforce.
Among the challenges dwarfing progress in Nigeria’s education sector are inadequate funding, lack of qualified personnel, inconsistencies in policy implementation, wrong curriculum and inadequate infrastructure. However, examination malpractice is rapidly becoming the most dangerous problem in the sector.
In 2015, Nigeria recorded the highest number of examination irregularities among the five member countries of WAEC, Charles Eguridu, then Head, National Office of the Council, said.
Examination malpractice has developed into a massive market and some Nigerians no longer see it as a crime, both the old and young engage in it, many no longer see examination as what you can sit for and pass on your own unless you are ‘helped.’
“I wrote my examination at Trinity Secondary School, Olodi-Apapa, Lagos. At the centre, I registered with the sum of N30, 000 but there were candidates who paid as much as N60, 000 at the same centre because there are different treatments for different payments” a candidate who does want to be identified told BusinessDay.
“We had answers written on the chalk board for candidates to copy and for those who paid N60, 000, they could afford to sleep through the examination period and still have their answer sheets attended to and duly submitted to the invigilators. Some students paid N500 per paper, the money was collected and the invigilators got part of it to allow students cheat” the candidate said.
Ajegunle in Lagos, is home to many of such ‘miracle centres’ as they are popularly called. Similar services are obtainable at Kingston High School, Alaba, Lagos and United Patec College, Alaba, Lagos, BusinessDay’s investigations showed. Such centres litter every state in Nigeria. Candidates flock to them in search ‘miracles.’
In 2017, WAEC indicted 121 secondary schools in Kano State for their involvement in malpractices. This was made known at a consultative meeting of WAEC with principals and proprietors of private schools in Kano. Alhaji Garba Gombe, Director, Kano Educational Resource Department (KERD) said 97 schools in the state received warning letters while 24 others were derecognised by WAEC for their involvement in examination malpractices.
Similarly, the National Examinations Council (NECO) declared in September 2017 that 43,905 candidates who sat for its 2016 Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) were involved in various forms of examination malpractice. NECO put the number of schools involved in the ‘mass cheating’ at 194, while the number of schools derecognised for examination malpractice was put at 14. This figure showed an increase of 297 cases over the 2015 statistics. Sokoto State topped the 2016 list with 3,939 cases representing 8.97 percent.
The situation has become such that some schools openly invite students to come and sit for and pass the exams in one sitting, registering alone guarantees success at these centres.
Dearth of data on examination malpractice in Nigeria makes it difficult to accurately estimate and measure its impact. “In fact a larger percentage of students sitting for school certificate examination like the National Examination Council (NECO) or WAEC examinations are no longer writing these exams on their own. People go about freely discussing how they cheated or were helped to cheat in an examination at their various centres” Nasiru Suleiman, a graduate of Business Administration and Management Studies living in Kaduna, Kaduna state said.
In a recent press statement, WAEC shifted the burden of responsibility for examination malpractice to school owners and teachers, accusing them of complicity in the compromise of examination questions in the on-going examination.
“The Council would like to emphasise that the question papers for the on-going WASSCE for school candidates, 2018 did not leak as has been erroneously portrayed in the media” Damianua Ojijeogu, Head of Affairs Unit said.
The recent sex-for-grade scandal at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun state, involving a professor and a student is a tip of the ice-berg, people with deep knowledge of the matter said. In many high institutions students employ various means of passing examinations, some through exporting extraneous materials to the examination hall, obsolete now with the advent of smartphones and other telecommunication gadgets.
Other students are sometimes able get the questions before the examination with the support of their lecturers, some by way of threatening the lecturers perhaps because they are cultists, while some female students offer sex to gain favour from lecturers, these are also forms of examination malpractice.
