An Investigative Report on Exam Malpractice

In places where law enforcement and judicial system are perceived (rightly or wrongly) to have some degree of effectiveness, people do break the law in blunt and undisguised ways ... but a much larger number of people (and corporations) contrive of ways to break the spirit and intent of the law, while positioning themselves to be able to argue that their actions could reasonably be construed as falling within the "letter" of the law. The wealthier you are, as an individual or corporation, the more capable you are of organizing your "law-breaking" and eventual legal defence in such a way as to avoid a conviction, or at the very least to ensure that you are convicted of a lesser or even minor offence (often following a plea deal). The poorer you are, the less access you have to these particular tools of "law-breaking".

In Nigeria, the police do arrest people, and the courts do convict people, but Nigeria's people, polity, economy and society operate in a context where the quality of law enforcement and the judiciary is presumed to alternate between involuntarily ineffectual, deliberately dysfunctional and consensually corrupt.

I do not think we Nigerians as a people are "worse" than anyone else when it comes to crime, however, there are certain kinds of crime that are committed bluntly and openly in Nigeria, whereas in other places anyone who wanted to commit the crime (and trust me, many do) would have to be more "sophisticated" in their criminality, or would have to dream wistfully of what they would have done if the risks of getting caught didn't outweigh the possible gain.

There is also the issue of compensation. In certain countries, officialdom are frankly overpaid. Yes, they are paid far more than would be economically feasible if the world's economy was normal. In this context, it is easier to uphold certain standards that are perceived to be beneficial to the society at large.

In Nigeria, where civil servants and pensioners can be owed more than a year's arrears of salary, it can be .... difficult for people with rent due at the end of the month to listen to their conscience. I am not making excuses for their behaviour, but it has long depressed me that Nigerian policy-making does not take into account basic economics. Our governments, at all three tiers, keep coming up with macro-level policies that they claim will lead to particular outcomes, while leaving in place all of the economic realities that effectively force people at the micro level to make decisions that in aggregate will negate whatever it is the macro so-called policy claims it is going to achieve.

Anyway, all this is a set up to get you to read this investigative article from The Punch newspaper. The stats at the bottom of the page indicate only about 450 or so people have read the electronic version of the article, which I think is unfortunate. This is exactly the sort of investigative reporting we all want (or say we want). Yes, I know most Nigerians still get their newspaper news from actual "paper" newspapers, but those get replaced each day and anyone who didn't read it on the day (a year ago) it was published on paper will have missed the news anyway.

A reporter went undercover to expose blatant, unashamed, criminal examination malpractices. I am not one of those people who assumed "everyone" in Nigeria is a criminal (I am a Nigerian, and I am not a criminal), but the exam malpractice problem clearly extends far beyond the single centre the reporter exposed.

And yes, it is a long article in a time when the internet has shortened people's attentions spans, and yes, I know "data" costs in Nigeria. Still, isn't it better to read the facts of a thing that we all know is happening, rather than basing our "knowledge" about it on the usual rumours that are never actually true, even if they are based on (and hint at) things that are true?

 PS: Is it the proper etiquette to say I was directed toward the article by the journalist Kadaria Ahmed? She posted a link.