Nodos International School, located at 1, Tedi Road, opposite Ojo Barracks, Lagos, was one of several ‘miracle centres’ in the country where pupils could sit for the Secondary School Certificate Examinations of the National Examination Council. Like other miracle centres, the school guaranteed good exam results through the connivance of rogue invigilators and corrupt school officials that provided pupils with answers to examinations questions for a bribe.
Now, the school has been closed down.
This was after SUNDAY PUNCH published a multimedia investigative report on November 8, 2015 titled ‘PUNCH undercover reporter exposes mass cheating at NECO Miracle Centre.’
Several stakeholders have since expressed dismay at the development and swung into action in efforts to tackle the menace of gross exam malpractice.
The Information Officer, NECO, Mr. Sani Azeez, speaking with SUNDAY PUNCH in a telephone interview, said the council had begun investigations. He said, “We have seen the report and we are carrying out our investigations. When we are through, we will come out with a public statement.”
When our correspondent asked about the current stage of the investigation and if other centres had been discovered, the NECO official simply said, “By the time we come out with our public statement, it will be so elaborate.”
Like NECO, the Lagos State Ministry of Education said it was conducting a probe into the details of the report.
The Public Relations Officer of the ministry, Mr. Jide Lawal, similarly declined to comment on the nature and extent of the probe, promising a timely and comprehensive response to SUNDAY PUNCH’s findings.
“We are still carrying out investigations on it. Yes, we saw it (the report) and we have taken action already. As soon as that is concluded, I will send it (our response) to you,” he said.
The state Ministry of Education has since sealed off the school with a message on the school gate: “School closed indefinitely.”
NAPTAN, NAPPS react
Olayiwola Olurode, a Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Lagos, had told SUNDAY PUNCH that there is a demand-and supply paradigm to the growing menace of miracle centres.
“It is like a tripartite kind of cartel—you have the school authorities colluding; you have the parents on one side also colluding; and you have the examination body. In most schools, especially the so-called private ones, that is what goes on. The general belief is that every stakeholder in the school establishment has a price,” he had said
A former Minister of Education (1999-2001), Prof. Tunde Adeniran, while describing the attraction to miracle centres as “a sad trend and a reflection of the direction of our society, values and morals,” corroborated this to SUNDAY PUNCH, explaining that before such centres could thrive, they must have had patrons.
“Those who run those centres also cannot do so unless they have an effective network. There must be a very effective network that consists of some administrators, some teachers and certainly parents,” he said.
Also commenting on the exposé, the President of the National Parent-Teacher Association of Nigeria, Mr. Haruna Danjuma, expressed regret, saying the association was determined to get to the bottom of the problem.
He added that NAPTAN had looked into the problem and discovered that not enough sensitisation had been carried out.
“The PTA, as a body, is trying to find out the truth about how we have managed to reach this stage where we rely on miracle centres. We are working on that and in our last meeting, we decided that every pupil must work hard and that we would embark on sensitisation exercises. We need to sensitise parents against involving their children in exam malpractices by paying more money to get results.”
The National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools agreed. The National Deputy President, NAPPS, Mr. Abayomi Otubela, told SUNDAY PUNCH that the association had embarked on awareness creation and reorientation programmes for parents through its recently established Private School Parents Forum.
According to Otubela, society has created an overdependence on paper certificates, which has resulted in discrimination against graduates of polytechnics and vocation-based institutes.
“When parents learn that their children can get Higher National Diploma certificates without being discriminated against, it will be evident that unnecessary demands for high scores will reduce. That will also discourage parents from looking for where they can pass with assistance.
“Government should organise periodical parents’ forums, where alternative certification can be exposed to parents; where parents can be discouraged from patronising miracle centres. If we do that, parents that are not well informed will be acquainted with this process and this can also affect the economy,” he said.
‘Government must step up’
As many stakeholders have observed, President Muhammadu Buhari’s recently appointed Minister of Education, Mr. Adamu Adamu, and Minister of State for Education, Prof. Anthony Anwuka, have an uphill task of meeting all of the increasing demands in the education sector.
Adeniran enumerated some of the factors giving rise to the proliferation of miracle centres in the country and how they can be tackled.
According to the former minister, the government has a lot of work to do to ensure that the value of education is restored.
He said, “They will have to revisit the critical issues in the education system, sanitise the system and reposition that sector so that this country is able to build new ethics and educational policies that will advance the course of our national development. We need an entirely new orientation in that sector to be able to get to where we need to get to”.
Otubela also called on the government to step up budgetary allocation towards education. The private schools’ boss explained further that, in monitoring and evaluating the level of teaching and learning in schools in Nigeria, the government should involve private school owners.
“Through the National Council on Education, we expect the ministers to call for a stakeholders’ meeting, where we can all assess what we have achieved in the past and what is left to be achieved so as to chart the way forward together. Then we will expect them to start from where we have stopped and not abandon all the achievements of the past”, he added.
Danjuma, speaking on the protocol for dealing with miracle centres, said the exam bodies are the first ports of call. According to him, the bodies should act on such reports by cancelling the affected centres or withholding their candidates’ results.
“If really, during the exams, a certain centre is suspected of foul play, the only thing left to do is for the exam body to cancel the centre and make serious investigations, and whoever is found culpable should be prosecuted,” Danjuma said.
Cyber control
Websites like www.jazzyfans.net, www.waploaded.com and www.examsanswer.net have been a backbone for easy credits in external examinations. The site had similarly furnished candidates at Nodos with answers during the June/July 2015 NECO exams.
Since the SUNDAY PUNCH’s investigative report, however, major changes have been recorded.
Previously, www.jazzyfans.net and www.waploaded.com, designed as all-purpose sites for the young and students, included URL links to exam answers alongside a menu ranging from entertainment and sports to politics.
But when our correspondent visited the two sites recently, no URL link could be found for answers to exam questions, while www.examsanswer.net had been removed from the cyberspace.
Speaking with SUNDAY PUNCH in a telephone interview, CEO of Aviva Digital Limited, Mr. Michael Oseji, said cyber security in Nigeria suffered a major lack of infrastructure.
He said, “NECO is a government agency; the government needs to put more effort into protecting its content. At what point do these candidates have access to the questions even before they are seated? If you can solve that, you can solve other factors?
“There is a leakage. That leakage might be electronic, because they (candidates) have passed this information to their friends and that boils down to the fact that they need to encrypt the questions. That is the problem.”
On the detection of illicit sites and prosecution of offenders, Oseji told our correspondent that he was not aware of any technology in place to catch cyber offenders.
He further explained that the moment one is online, a trail is left behind by the Internet protocol address of the computer, which allows for the person to be tracked down to his location.
“It is those that are involved in 419 that they arrest and those arrests are aided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation because they (the FBI) have the technology to track the Internet Protocol addresses of the laptops used for these crimes.
“But the question is, do our government agencies — the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and others — have that technology? If they have it, then they haven’t been using it. The moment a site begins to do something illegal, the government has the right to shut it down,” the IT expert said.
‘Better law enforcement needed’
The Examination Malpractices Act No. 33 of the 1999 Constitution stipulates a minimum punishment of N50,000 and a maximum of five years imprisonment without the option of fine for violators of the offences stipulated in the Act. However, only a handful of examination malefactors are ever prosecuted.
Curiously, when asked whether Buhari should turn his anti-corruption searchlight on the education sector, the NAPTAN boss ruled out the presence of corruption.
“As we speak, I don’t think there is any corruption in the education sector. The only corruption we face is the fact that the money budgeted for the sector is not being released in totality. Those are the areas that we want President Buhari to work on; whatever is budgeted for education should be released 100 per cent so that education can move forward. The problem is that government at all levels finds it difficult to release the budgeted amount.”
Speaking on the sufficiency of the existing laws to tackle exam malpractices, Adeniran said, if the laws are effectively implemented, they will go a long way in curbing illicit activities.
“There are two fundamental issues: Are they being effectively executed? Are those who are supposed to take action doing so and at the appropriate time? I believe that there could be more severe sanctions, but much more than that, there has to be a reorientation of our pupils, teachers and parents.”
The NAPTAN boss also noted that though every pupil should take it upon themselves to act responsibly, they would not be successful without the support of schools, local governments and the society at large.
“If any school, whether public or private, charges a parent a kobo more than the normal fee charged by the exam body, it means that something wrong is happening there and it should be indicated. That is how we can stamp out exam malpractice. It is very simple if we all agree with one another and we work towards that.
“We want the judiciary to be up and doing. We want the police and all the security outfits to be up and doing. Whoever is caught in these acts — whether teacher, invigilator, supervisor, pupils or even parents — should be prosecuted. There are laws in place, but are they being put into practice? If they are, I am sure exam malpractice will be a thing of the past.”
With the indefinite closure of Nodos International School, stakeholders look to Buhari’s government for a complete turnaround of the education sector.
