There is a way that seems right to many but leads to eventual destruction. Majority of secondary school students know how to pass examinations without studying. Delight Clifford, now over 18, grew up in such an environment. Saying no to vices, immorality and exam malpractice seems impossible because everyone does it and the system supports it. Harms abound for anyone who wants to avoid it, who wants to play straight.
At 16-plus in her final year in secondary school, she attempted the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination to study Law, but scored very low. Now, out of school, she met a group called Christian Students Network (CSN) run by two mentors who are brothers, Jeremy and Obinna Nwachukwu. They convinced her that it was possible to live straight, work hard, and pass JAMB or any exams like someone who studied in very big schools that fly high over foreign exams such as the Cambridge.
That seemed to be what she ever wanted; living a life of purity. Even at 12, she had started shunning male advances, rejecting the hands of boys who usually rush girls entering puberty stage. Meeting CSN now strengthened her resolve and helped her to find support and method of studying to succeed without exam frauds and vices.
Many of her mates laughed her dreams off, letting her know nobody dares the devil; you must open up, you must collect, you must give. They showed her how impossible it was to read your way to JAMB success coming from ordinary background and from anyhow secondary school life. You must sort and allow others to write for you or you collect support to success. Fear and doubt, yes, but the strict voices of Jeremy and Obinna kept urging her to dare.
They showed her the right way to study for external examination, but it was three months to the next JAMB. She fought it but scored 265 but could not meet up for Law at Uniport when her post JAMB was added. This encouraged her a lot to try harder the next year.
Now, 2025 exam and she was assisted to get all the books she needed, got the right APPs that admitted her to a virtual study class where past question papers of over 10 years were revised with notes. She was given strict order to go to a nearby church compound called Rock Word where well-meaning youths in Elelenwo now go for salvation and character molding under CSN outreach. Her study period of not less than five hours per day was clearly marked out for her.
She was under mandate by her spiritual-cum academic mentors to read and review them, then come back to be reviewed by her mentors to ensure she did not do cramming job. She trudged and sojourned on along these prescriptions, bearing pains of hard study, all aimed at making her strong and ready to face the exam battle without aid, without sorting, without fraud.
On the day of JAMB battle, she faced it squarely, aiming for above 300, but landed at 276. The result was evidence that she fought hard, not coming from those elite schools where high scores without sorting can be achieved.
Delight was an experiment that good girls can live without blemish, live with purity of heart and body, and with determination for academic success.
She is determined to study Law in the UNIPORT, next door to her family hometown of Aluu, near Port Harcourt. She is warming up for the post-JAMB test or screening to try for a slot in the university.
If she succeeds, Delight would be a model and a sample copy in the deteriorating firmament where hard work is now alien to young people and where schooling in public schools and in most quack private schools is nothing short of moral death sentence.
CSN mentors want to prove that there is still a way out, that young people and teenagers need close attention and effective parenting to turn good copies. The mentors think the failure is on the side of parents and guardians who failed long ago. Between weak teachers and morally bankrupt lecturers to absentee and decadent parents, the children seem to be in wrong hands.
CSN’s mission, starting from Elelenwo in PH, is to prove that something can be done; that there are young boys and girls ready to study under correct environment and shun immorality, shun casual relationships, shun alcoholism, shun dating, shun smoking, shun cultism, and confront the world with sword of purity and the word of God.
Their success will win more lost souls back to study rooms, back to purity, back to loyalty to the good path, and back to success. That is what Delight stands for. Her JAMB score (276) is more than academic success but evidence that within the weak and poor homes in our country, there are pure souls yelling for good supervision and good leadership to excel. Shell and Total experimented this in the academic angle when they created the Cradle-to-Career (C2C for Shell) and Catch-Dem-Young (for Total) where brilliant pupils from rural and backward primary schools are fished out in host community areas and sent to Ivy schools in the city to study along with children of the rich to see how they turn out. The experiment has so far proved that some of the pupils excelled and became class leaders and went further to graduate with flying colours in the university, some abroad.
Delight is another model, another experiment waiting to happen, if her university admission goes through. Already, she is a reader, a scholar, a researcher, a mini motivational speaker, someone who teaches others on her facebook page. She is an emerging expert in the ‘Spoken Word’, rendering flowing messages with poetic flow in prose. She chews books and explores for ideas. She believes in growth, adding one block of knowledge on another every day.
The world is waiting!
