– Sex for Grade In Nigerian institutions of higher learning will continue unabated as far as the system overvalue paper attestation called certificate
By Abu-Taqiyah Zumo
We should be under no illusion that our educational system is fraught with rot; from lecturers who have not updated their skills in decades, to poor tools, apparatus and infrastructure, to students who rather join cults and 419 rings and then the most abhorrent of all, sexual assault and harassment between students and between (mostly female) students and lecturers.
We always blame the output without necessarily checkmating the input or at least looking at the genesis of these sex scandals in our schools.
Why for God-sake, in the 21st century, Nigeria should be crazy about paper qualification, useless certificates?
Everything is hinged on passing exams and getting passmark ie 40. What of the remaining 60%?
It’s the total neglect of that huge percentage of 60% that brought the country to its knees today. It’s the tragedy that led the country to have teachers who cannot read and write, lawyers who cannot communicate to defend cases, medical doctors who cannot diagnose and engineers who will never go to the field. That’s the tragedy of our certificates.
It’s so scandalous that nothing works in this country without certificate and fake certificate for that matter. School certificate, fake; marriage certificate fake; Contract completion, fake certificate; winning election and everything else, fake certificate.
I could recall the inability of holding my breath when an army general; a former military governor, a former minister, a former head of state, and the current Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari could not contest 2019 election because of SSCE certificate.
Buhari was bullied, intimidated and even harassed on this issue.
We always fake our lives as a nation with fake certificates. Useless certificates. We have thrown overboard practical knowledge and wisdom, character training and attitudinal behavior and skills acquisition.
So, as loose as our universities are, as lawless as our people are, sex for grade is another quick way of getting fake certificate for gainful employment. No law will stop this rascality until we devalue paper qualification and go for practical knowledge and skills.