How low will a nation descend before some sufficiently embittered citizens rise up patriotically to say ‘’enough’’ to some nonsense? Ever since the late 1990s when I got to hear of it, ‘’co-operation fee’’, a fee which proprietors and heads of secondary schools who are preparing their final year students for the external West African School Certificate (WASC) exams charged their candidates has, over the years, become a recognized fee which parents and sponsors are required to pay for their wards. And many pay it without question.
No one in Nigeria, whether big or small, whether significant or irrelevant can claim not to know of this illegal and pernicious fee which is now being collected ‘’officially’’ in almost all the schools. How bad or terrible can things go before someone somewhere will find the stench unbearable and then act? The fee is simply meant to bribe WAEC officials who will come for the invigilation of the examinations, they are to ‘’co cooperate’’ with the students and make them pass with ease. Proprietors and school heads some of whom participate in the demand for and collection of this fee know what it is meant for. Yet the parents and sponsors go for it without any ounce of embarrassment. None has asked the other why they do it.
Governors of states who preside over the destinies of millions of people know about this fee. The State Security Service, the police and other law enforcement agencies know about this fee. Fathers and mothers who were supposedly better brought up in earlier, better times than now know about this fee and pay on behalf of their children. They want their kids to succeed without labouring or paying a price for that success.
This fee and what it stands for are doing great damage to schooling and learning in our land. In the immediate past, schools and some students used to pretend that a functional system that was delivering results to Nigeria was going on. Now, no one is putting up with such pretenses any more.
Students have become used to being shown what to write and pass their ‘’examinations’’ at credit levels but without any form of schooling in their heads. They know about this unholy alliance between students and the authorities and expect to enter into it. There is no shame in it. It is the reason why final year students and our students in secondary schools generally are no longer serious with school work. Who can blame them? If you know that in the final exams, you will bribe to get invigilators to look the other way while you do everything fair and foul to pass your exams, what again is the motivation for being serious?
It looks to me like our political leaders are not aware of the rot in the country, especially in the education sector. When some pessimists say the country is finished, many say they are unkind to Nigeria. What is left of a place where everybody is engaged in one act of deception and destruction of his country as if we were living in another person’s else country and are intent on inflicting the deepest cut of all on it?
For some of us, the joy of living in a competitive society and participating in healthy competitive academic challenges is one of the things I look back to with admiration or fond memories. Some of us grew up with the thought that by the early 80s Nigeria, our country, would emerge as a giant. We saw that this nation has got talents in all spheres of human strivings and if they are well harnessed, nothing can stop us from arriving at the top.
I write about some of these failings to make an indelible statement that when some of these damn things were going on, there was one man called Mr Idang Alibi who objected vehemently to them. He said they were bad and he was not for them at all. This, and all other nonsense going on, must stop now so that Nigeria can forge ahead.