There is an outcry of SSCE and NECO candidates
over the inhuman ways in which SSCE and NECO supervisors have turned their job to money-making venture.
It has been reported by candidates that the supervisors, rather than encourage students to read hard and pass their examinations creditably, are forcing the students to pay huge sums of money before they can append their signatures on the answer sheets of the candidates.
As much as this payment is made, the candidates will be allowed to copy as much as they want without any supervisor’s rebuke. Principals, teachers and the supervisors are in together in this ugly terrain and it has almost become a norm everywhere.
The supervisor go ahead to persuade students to pay these monies to secure their future. What an irony! Whereas they are actually sent to enforce the law, they themselves teach the children how to break it.
To the unserious students who do not study, it is a welcome development. They could just pay the money and be allowed to copy as much as they could. But to the serious ones, it is cheating. They have read and are prepared for the exams, but are forced to pay for what they know they can write and pass.
The most annoying part is that some of the answers they are provided with are actually wrong. Answers were not verified from the sources they were got and have been given to stupid candidates to copy.
A chat with some of the candidates who felt they were cheated have shown that they go as far as driving candidates who could not afford the money out of the examination halls. Others who just have half of the money were also sent out.
It is unheard of that supervisors who were known for integrity and high moral standard could be this mean. It may not be all, but most of them are guilty. They even put up targets of how much they envisage to get at the end of the supervisory job.
How can the younger generation be serious? How can the dying reading culture be activated? How can hard work be encouraged? How can the nation grow technologically? How can new discoveries be made, when those to lead the way are leading us astray?
To the ones who are merely on the average in intelligence, they will just be discouraged and think that it is better to pay the money and copy rather than struggle to study.
The safety of those few good supervisors who would want to do the right thing is largely compromised. Students may even attack them on their way, tagging them wicked.
This even will also produce more harlots, more hooligans, more touts and even more members of the Boko Haram sect who will bomb the nation in the near future.
It is like keeping a child in the custody of an adult who eventually brought about the death of that particular child. “How are the mighty fallen.”
To be very candid, they are destroying the nation. What they are doing is worse than what the “political thieves” are doing. They are not helping her in any way.
Those who, in their time of acquiring education, enjoyed good education, good monitoring and solid discipline are the ones destroying the very foundation of the educational system.
They are rendering the nation hopeless, slaughtering the hope of the nation’s survival of the future on the altar of their greed. “Things are actually fallen apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the earth” – Chinua Achebe.
Nigeria has little or no hope of educated men and women for tomorrow by this development. Who will lead our nation? Who will manage our resources? Who will keep this nation from decay since they have decided to “nib the flower in the bud?”
When they go to higher institutions without a good foundation of secondary education, how can they cope and even defend their papers? Who will compete with other students internationally?
The nation is filled with certificate holders with no virtue or knowledge to back it up.
What can a certificate devoid of knowledge do for a country? Illiteracy will take over the nation. Security will be far from us as youths may not have a reason to live  or know the value of another person’s life.
The good people of Nigeria should rise against this menace. Principals of both public and private schools should rise and the students should also rise against it.
The youths should realise that there is no easy way to success. It is actually an easy way to doom. Those earlier called should not see it as an opportunity to promote the names of their schools; they should rather fight against it honestly.
Government should have a system of supervising the supervisors. Disciplinary measures should be taken against defaulters. Let us all rise and stop this devourer before it turns this nation into a country of hoodlums.
The supervisors themselves should forget about their greed and think of the future of this nation. Let it not be that the cars they want to drive and the houses they want to build are the reasons for the collapse of education in this nation.
If you have all these, and the nation is not safe, to what extent can the wealth you have amassed be useful? Remembers! “An unexamined life is not worth living”- Socrates. Think, supervisor think!
Ikiensikimama is a student of Linguistic and Communication Studies, UNIPORT

Iyeneomi Mercy Ikiensikimama