Somewhere between the first term and the final examination, we stopped asking what children know and started asking what they can buy. In too many schools today, the question paper arrives before the lesson is taught. The answer script is negotiated before the pen is picked up. And the people supervising the transaction are not strangers at the gate. They wear the same chalk dust on their sleeves that they wore when they first entered the profession. This is how a system collapses without making a sound. Not with a policy announcement, but with small, daily compromises that tell a child that effort is optional and that integrity is negotiable. When that lesson is learnt, the damage outlives any single examination cycle.
One of the reasons the compromise has become normal is that many teachers no longer regard the job as a vocation. For a growing number, teaching is a placeholder. Their real investments are elsewhere: a shop at the market, a fleet of tricycles, a political structure, a contract that pays faster. They report for duty, sign the register, and conserve their energy for what they believe matters more. Preparation is thin, feedback is rare, and the classroom becomes a space to endure rather than to build. When teaching is treated as an afterthought, assessment cannot be honest. If you have not taught, you cannot fairly test. So the outcome is sold. “Bring ten thousand and I will sort you.” “Come after lessons.” In such a setting, the diligent student is the one who loses. They watch peers who did nothing collect the same grade, and they draw the only logical conclusion available to them: that work counts for less than access. A teacher who shows up for salary but not for service will, sooner or later, treat results as another commodity to trade.
It would be dishonest, however, to lay the blame at the classroom door alone. The architecture of malpractice is wider and has recognisable addresses. There are principals who brand their schools as “guaranteed pass” centres and circulate price lists per subject. There are invigilators and external supervisors deployed by examination bodies who collect money at the entrance and permit phones, prepared notes, and whispering during the paper. Inside WAEC, NECO, NABTEB and JAMB there are officials who leak questions hours before the exam, and others who alter scores after marking for a fee. In state ministries of education and local education authorities, there are officials who accredit centres they know to be fraudulent, ignore written complaints, and shield schools that have become examination markets. At zonal and state levels, there are directors who receive “returns” from these centres and choose not to see what is happening during monitoring visits. Parents are part of this chain too. Some approach teachers directly and ask for the rate. When one teacher refuses, they move to the next until they find a willing partner. When every link in the chain is complicit, responsibility is diffused and no one feels accountable. The teacher blames the principal, the principal blames the supervisor, the supervisor blames the board, and the child learns that success is a function of who you know and what you can pay.
The cost of this arrangement is not abstract. It returns to us in ways we feel but rarely trace back to the hall. A doctor who passed anatomy through expo will one day be on duty when someone you love is ill. An engineer who bought his way through applied mechanics will certify a structure that your family will use. An accountant who cannot balance a ledger will be entrusted with public funds. When competence is missing, institutions fail. Employers lose faith in local qualifications and demand remedial tests or foreign credentials. Investors take their capital elsewhere. Government revenue shrinks, which means delayed salaries, poorly equipped schools, and fewer training opportunities. The same teacher who collected a few thousand naira to facilitate cheating ends up working in a system that cannot afford to pay a decent wage. We are consuming the seed we should be planting and then complaining that the harvest is poor. No country can sustain itself when its certificates no longer represent ability.
None of this is to say that every teacher has surrendered. That would be unfair and inaccurate. In the same public schools, with the same crowded classrooms and irregular pay, there are teachers who still treat the job as a calling. They arrive early, plan their lessons, mark scripts without favour, and stay back to coach children who are struggling, often without charging a kobo. They buy instructional materials from their own pockets, organise free extra classes, and feel genuine distress when a student fails because they believe more could have been done. They do this quietly, without applause. It is their reputation that is being dragged when people speak of “teachers” as a single, compromised group. It is their future that is being eroded when a certificate loses meaning. Their presence matters because it proves a simple point: poor conditions may explain frustration, but they do not justify betrayal. Integrity is a choice made daily, especially when no one is watching.
There is also a generational dimension we seldom discuss. Every adult in a classroom was once a child who was either passed or failed honestly, and who was taught that trying again after failure was part of growth. To now teach dishonesty is to break that chain. The students we assist to cheat will become the professionals who serve us. They will be the ones in the hospital, on the construction site, in the courtroom, and in the civil service. If they arrive there by fraud, they will administer the country by fraud. When they fail us, we will call it a crisis of leadership. But leadership is formed in small decisions: whether to explain a concept again, whether to mark fairly, whether to say no to a bribe. A child who learns that grades can be negotiated will grow into an adult who believes rules can be negotiated. That is a dangerous inheritance.
The window for old-style malpractice is also closing. CCTV cameras in examination halls, biometric verification, and computer-based testing are making it harder to trade answers in the open. The teacher whose only value was in leaking questions will soon find that market gone. Yet if we have not rebuilt teaching in the meantime, we will be left with clean halls and empty graduates. Surveillance cannot replace pedagogy. Policing cannot substitute for learning. At some point, someone must actually teach, and someone must actually study. Without that, we are simply moving the fraud to a different place.
What, then, should be done? The remedies are not mysterious, though they require political will. To begin with, supervision must be credible and unpredictable. Invigilators should be rotated across schools, external monitors should arrive without notice, and evidence should be acted upon swiftly. Sanctions must cut across the entire chain. The principal who runs a miracle centre should lose accreditation and face prosecution. The invigilator who collects money at the gate should be dismissed and barred. The WAEC, NECO, NABTEB or JAMB official who leaks papers or tampers with results should face criminal charges and public naming. Ministry officials who accredit fraudulent centres or suppress reports must be held to account. Parents who offer bribes should also be liable. Impunity is the oxygen of this practice, and it must be cut off.
Furthermore, the profession must regulate itself. Teachers’ associations and regulatory councils should set clear ethical standards, enforce them, and protect members who refuse to take part in malpractice. Whistleblowers should be shielded from victimisation and rewarded for speaking up. At the same time, government must honour its side of the bargain. Teachers should be paid properly and on time, not as a reward for honesty but as recognition of the value of the work. Funding for training, instructional materials and school infrastructure must improve so that teachers are not forced to choose between survival and standards. Those who continue to treat teaching as a mere job should be encouraged to exit, so that space opens for people who are committed.
Equally, the culture at home must change. Parents need to shift the question they ask at the end of a term. Instead of “How many As?”, the question should be “What has my child learnt?” A society that demands evidence of learning will eventually produce schools that deliver learning. When parents stop chasing miracles and start demanding progress, the market for expo collapses.
In weighing all of this, we must remember what is at stake. A nation is not built on paper. It is built on skill, judgement and character. Skill comes from learning. Learning is verified through honest assessment. When we corrupt assessment, we corrupt the pipeline that produces doctors, engineers, teachers, and public servants. The teacher who aids malpractice believes they are helping a child. In truth, they are issuing that child a cheque that will bounce in the real world. The principal, the supervisor, and the board official who enable it are issuing the same cheque.
And yet there is hope, because there are still teachers who refuse to participate. They prove every day that another way is possible. They mark honestly even when it is unpopular. They teach even when it is inconvenient. They stay because they believe the work matters. If we want respect for the profession, we must start by respecting the work itself. If we want a country that functions, we must begin with classrooms and examination halls that function.
The path ahead is straightforward, though not easy. Teach properly. Learn properly. Assess fairly. Enforce the rules without exception. Reward integrity. The alternative is to continue printing certificates that mean nothing, and to watch a generation enter the world unprepared. That is a price too high to pay. The decision rests with us: the teacher at the desk, the parent at home, the official in the office. We can keep trading the future, or we can decide to build it.
Copyright © 2026 Fẹ́mi Akínṣọlá. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
