We all know that 70 per cent is a high score in any exams. To that effect, the general performance of candidates that sat for the just-released WAEC can be said to be impressive. However, that is not to say the usual problems of missing or withheld results, as well as results that were cancelled were not present.
Without sounding pessimistic about the performance at this year’s examination, I dare say many people have been wondering what brought about the enhanced overall performance of students. To this end, they are asking what role the very well known miracle centres may or may not have played in the result. The issue of miracle centres where the operators have become oracles who are regularly consulted by both students and some parents has remained a sour point of our education at the secondary school level.
The so called special centres found across the country can only be described as miraculous in the way candidates are transformed overnight into some super intelligent students. How it is done is anybody’s guese. The simple fact is only a few students fail to make it at such centres. And these must be highly irredeemable cases. The rest come as they say in flying colours. That is why they are highly sought after.
Due to the numerous challenges of the education sector and the quest for ways to bring the teeming problems to a halt, the minister of education, Prof Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufai’i had to accept the simple truth that the sector is in comatose and needs urgent surgery to be revived. She admitted that in the interest of the future of the country, its education needed to be rescued.
She couldn’t hide it when she categorically emphasised during the education summit last year, that the country as far as education is concerned was living on a time bomb and by the time it explodes, there would certainly be casualties, some of whom she said would take a life time to recover. The country which serves as mother for all will bear the brunt as well as the economy which has been wobbling, all will be badly affected, she contended.
The deadliest report so far on the list of the sector’s ailments is its incurable disease of corruption (in form of exam malpractice, extortion, blackmail, indiscipline of both examiners and the students, and the ‘realistic’ belief that miracles still happen especially in some centres), which has been in the fore-front of the battles with different administrations that have stirred the affairs of the ministry.
Investigations have shown that the miracle centres have in the real sense of their name performed miracles in the lives of some students that patronized them, as they recorded distinction and credit in their subjects. And for others whose miracles are yet to come, the problem might be that they had little or no faith at all, or that the centres have chosen to bless those they dim fit and hate the others.
For the sake of passing exams and going into higher institutions of learning, candidates who fulfill all requisite requirements by worshipping at the alter of the operators are accordingly taken through the necessary rituals which ensure they come out in flying colours. They are guided by teachers who are hardly qualified but have the wherewithal to get the real exam questions and answers and administer same at exorbitant prices to the teeming students who want to pass without stress.
The attitude of some parents in the promotion and perpetuation of these centres has not helped the matter. Some parents are known to have aided the rot in the sector with their unacceptable behavior which has further bastardised education in the country. Such parents hide under the love of their children and the concern for their future to do the unspeakable. Any wonder why we appear to be losing the much cherished values.
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