MIRACLE CENTRES

Just like every adult, the young ones have dreams and equally want to make progress in their life endeavours. In Nigeria, the common dream of every teenager is to gain admission into the university. Their fate, however, lies on the wings of the pre-university exams.... ably conducted by WEAC, NECO, JAMB and POST-UME. These bodies are parastatals under Nigeria’s Education Ministry...

There was a time when WAEC and JAMB was all a high school graduating student contends with. As time passed, faith in WAEC dropped and NECO was introduced, further giving the students options to choose from.
However, after many years of JAMB’s existence, it omnipotence has been reduced, as any student who scales through it still has to face another pre-admission examination set by his/her university of choice: POST-UME. The fate of the wanna-be undergraduates now lies in the hands of the University.

Like we all know, there are mediocre individuals who will always want to exploit people and promise to make things easier for them. Expectedly also, there will always be victims.
Our young ones are now very lazy, these days they complain about EVERY examination, perhaps they have seen it in society that hard work doesn’t pay much.... Shame!
In my days, JAMB [Joint Admission Matriculation Examination] was all that we could describe as hard, and everyone who prepares well enough still scales through it.
Students of today complain about WAEC, NECO, JAMB, POLY JAMB and the POST-UME. However, there are certain ‘adults’ who have capitalized on the laziness of these students and now promise to help them scale through it, not without some money exchanging hands.

What do you find these days? A very young chap who you think should still be in Junior Secondary session comes to tell you he/she has passed WAEC or NECO. No thanks to the workings of MIRACLE CENTRES.

What do they do at these MIRACLE CENTRES? The child registers with any of the centres [individually managed by different operators], he/she pays above the normal exam fees stipulated by the relevant government agencies. Most of these miracle centres are run by teachers, university students, school proprietors or jobless university graduates. They promise the students that should they apply through and with them, they would get “STRAIGHT A’s” or that they will get “ABOVE CUT-OFF MARK...”

These lazy students wanting to gain admission into the university by all means convince their parents to register them with these centres. Most of them are not schools, they are exactly what they are – centres!
This means, these students leave the ‘original’ schools that they’ve been with up till their present levels to enrol at these centres... Some of these centres are located in the rural and undeveloped areas.

The extra money the students pay are either used to bribe the government invigilators, buy exam questions before hand from saboteurs in the examination bodies, or to achieve other things that would guarantee that the student passes by all means.
Answers to all the questions are either provided to the students right in the exam hall, or the students are given the answers to study right before the exams or they are given ‘free-hand’ to “co-operate’ during the exams. The latter means that students are allowed to ask themselves questions inside the hall and are allowed to use textbooks and others materials that ideally will not be permissible in a normal exam condition.

Students with these centres are not there by surprise, they are in the know of why they went there and, should the proprietors of these places fail to ‘perform’, they should be ready for tough times with the students.

Recently in Benin City, Nigeria, the proprietor of one of the MIRACLE CENTRES – Achievers Education Centre ran away 2days to the exam, leaving the enrolled students bewildered as to what their fate will become. The students numbering over a hundred said they had made complete registration payments and were even given identity cards that would enable them sit for the exams....
......2days to the exams, Mr. Achiever, as he was fondly referred to, is nowhere to be found!

These guy isn’t new in the game, my investigation reveals that he has been in this trade for many years. The difference now is that this is the first time he is ‘running’ away before the exams, other times he stayed to ‘deliver’ to kids what he ‘promised’ them.

This is a big drawback to our educational system. While I feel no pity for the victim students, I feel big shame for their parents, who have little or no regards for MORALS or VALUES. Most of these parents actually go to the centres to beg with the operators to “do everything possible to make sure my child passes very well....”

What kind of students will these ones be when they gain admission into the universities, what a breed to expect? How can cultism reduce in our universities with people like this gaining admission into it? How will prostitution, stealing and other vices ubiquitous among undergraduates be reduced when we permit these acts of decadence and wickedness?

The education ministry cannot wash its hands completely off this menace. Who approved these centres? Can’t their collaborators and operators be brought to book?
These MIRACLE CENTRES run various adverts on Television and Radio, who would say he or she knows nothing about them and where they are located?

This nonsense must stop! Otherwise, the very few responsible parents we still have in our midst will keep sending their kids abroad to study owing to the decay in our system. Isn’t it shameful that parents send their children to countries like Gambia and Ghana for university education? Imagine! How many of these nationals do we have in our schools?
In the 80’s and early 90’s, we had lots of foreigners in our tertiary institutions, all these have become history owing to the lapses and decay in the educational system.... at all levels!

I want to use this medium to call on the relevant authorities to stand up for posterity. Save the future of our young ones, save the future of our country!
Stand up for truth. Save our children. Fight these ills headlong. I equally want to call on every parent out there; whatever you teach or permit your child to do today will either help or haunt you tomorrow. Be careful!

Hard work doesn’t kill, these facts our children must learn and accept. It is better to fail honourably than to pass disgracefully. These young ones will be leaders of this nation in future, let’s be careful the kind of values we teach them today....
“Train up a child in the way that YOU WANT HIM TO GO, when he is old he will not DEPART from it.....”

God bless Nigeria!