…Govt’s body language encourages malpractices
Corruption in the Nigerian education system, like a cancer, is eating deeper into the fabrics of school administrators, policymakers and implementers with detrimental consequences for students, teachers, and the overall quality of education.
Corruption erodes Nigeria’s academic examinations by undermining integrity, fairness, and the overall quality of the system.
It manifests in various ways, including examination malpractice, bribery, and the use of influence to manipulate results, ultimately eroding public trust in the educational process.
The Nigerian educational examinations are on the verge of losing credibility as malpractices become rampant. The registration of special centres is said to be a tacit endorsement of fraud.
Those special centres are covens for all manner of malpractices. The tacit threats of demotion by some state governments to teachers if their students fail to pass external examinations may have increased the desperation to compromise standards.
Marks for money
At various levels of learning across the country, educators have devised means of collecting financial gratifications for marks.
According to the Second Household Survey conducted by the Chatham House Africa Programme’s Social Norms and Accountable Governance (SNAG) project, over 87 percent of survey respondents thought parents should not pay bribes to secure a passing grade for their child in an examination, against eight percent in favour.
It also discovered that parents are likely to pay bribes because they believe this guarantees a pass mark for their children in an examination.
Due to underinvestment and slipping standards in public schools, many Nigerian families turn to private providers; and when parents are asked to pay bribes in addition to the higher cost of private schooling, their children can be put at further risk of unrealised potential and lifelong poverty if the bribe demands are unmet.
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Systematic admission grading models in unity schools
Another mode of corruptive tendencies in unity schools is the admission grading system. While pupils from some states like Anambra need at least 130 marks out of 300 to gain admission, their counterparts from Zamfara only need to score two marks.
In the 2022/2023 academic session, for instance, the cut-off mark for Anambra was 139; Abia, 130; Delta, 131. Conversely, the cut-off mark for Adamawa was 62; Bauchi, 35; Taraba, three (male) 11 (female); Zamfara four (male) two (female).
This is a common way of breeding nepotism and corruption in a sector such as the education system.
Extortion in schools
A recent incident where a staff of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) was caught demanding N16,000 from new students before completing their admission process is one of those mechanism adopted in many institutions to rip students off financially.
Some months ago, concerned parents of Queen’s College, Yaba, Lagos, reportedly petitioned Tunji Alausa, minister of Education, over what they called persistent and unauthorised financial demands on them by the school’s PTA and management.
The approved maximum PTA levy is said to be N12,000 per term for all unity colleges. But Queen’s College allegedly charges N21,500 per student.
Though the PTA Chairman of the school, denied this allegation, stating that the fee is N19,000 and not N21,500.
Stanley Boroh, senior lecturer at the Federal University, Otuoke, Bayelsa State, who condemned the incident at UNN, which he said is not isolated cases but symptoms of a deeper malaise that demands urgent action.
“Monetising admissions into schools, and the mismanagement of billions in educational funds, paint a grim picture of a sector in crisis,” he said.
Jessica Osuere, chief executive officer at RubbiesHub Educational Services, said that the issue of corruption has become endemic in Nigeria and that it was crippling the education system, and by implication, the economy.
Osuere emphasised that the incidents of admission racketeering and extortions reflect a deeper rot in the system.
“When merit is replaced by money and connections, we produce unqualified graduates, weaken our workforce, and lose talented minds to other countries. This fuels poverty, inequality, and slows national development.
She narrated how a medical school graduate from the University of Benin could not get allocation for internship because he does not have a connection.
“Out of over a 100 that applied to UBTH, less than 20 or so were accepted. The second-best graduating student couldn’t make the list, because he didn’t have someone in the system.
“That’s how bad we have gone as a nation! Excellence being sacrificed on the altar of political connections, tribalism and what have you,” she said.
Osuere called for accountability, transparency, and restoration of integrity to the education system.
“Honestly, we need a complete shift of our mindset as a nation; education should build futures, not sell them,” she noted.
Recently, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) exposed a scandal involving the Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), where N71.2 billion of N100 billion allocated for student loans remains unaccounted for.
Over 51 institutions were implicated in unauthorised deductions, robbing students of the opportunities.
Similarly, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has lost billions to unmonitored disbursements, with contractors and administrators often colluding to divert funds.
Nigeria’s education system can be a catalyst for economic growth, but only if corruption is uprooted. The government, institutions, and citizens must unite to demand transparency and reject complicity.
Observers have also lamented the rise in examination malpractice perpetrated by pupils, sometimes in connivance with their parents.
“It is sad that there is hardly any examination these days that people do not cheat. Even recently, we heard about such in some of the external examinations. Parents, teachers and invigilators are said to be fueling this criminal act,” Thompson Etuk, a psychologist, said.
According to Etuk, “I even heard that some schools are losing their students and pupils to others simply because of their strictness. Once students notice that such schools have zero tolerance for exam malpractice, they change to other schools that tolerate such fraud. A student that obtained his papers through fraud has built his or her future on corruption, and that is why the society is entangled.”
