The examination hall used to be sacred ground. It was where effort met reward, where a child’s sleepless nights were tested against questions that could not be bargained with. Today, in too many centres across the country, it has become a marketplace. Answers are sold by the page. Grades are upgraded by negotiation. Invigilation is done with one eye on the door and the other on a phone. And the people running the stall are not outsiders. They are the same men and women we call “Sir” and “Madam” in class. This is not about one bad paper or one careless supervisor. It is about a quiet collapse. When teachers aid malpractice, they are not helping students. They are mortgaging the next twenty years of this country, and they are doing it with our full knowledge.
A painful truth we must admit is that many in the profession no longer see teaching as a calling. For them it is a holding bay, a job to endure until something better comes along. Their real energy goes into their shop, their transport business, their politics, or other side hustles. They arrive late, leave early, and treat lesson preparation as an afterthought. When you do not teach, you cannot assess honestly. The easy way out then becomes to sell the outcome. “Bring ten thousand and you will pass.” “Meet me after school.” In that environment serious students are punished. They watch classmates who did nothing walk away with the same A, and they learn the wrong lesson: that work does not matter, only connection does. A teacher who treats the classroom as a part-time commitment will inevitably treat results as another part-time transaction.
Let us also stop pretending that this is only about classroom teachers. The chain of corruption has specific faces and offices. There are principals who advertise their schools as “miracle centres” and charge parents per subject. There are invigilators and external supervisors posted by examination bodies who collect money at the gate and allow phones, textbooks, and prepared answers into the hall. There are officials inside WAEC, NECO, NABTEB and JAMB who leak question papers hours before an exam, or who alter results after marking for a fee. There are education secretaries and ministry officials who accredit substandard centres, ignore petitions, and protect schools known to trade grades. There are zonal and state directors who receive “returns” from these centres and look away during monitoring. Parents are also in the room. Some walk straight to the teacher and ask for the price list. When one teacher refuses, they find another. When everyone in the chain has a role, no one can claim innocence. The teacher points at the principal, the principal points at the supervisor, the supervisor points at the board official, and the student learns that success is about who you know and what you can pay.
The bill for this always comes back to us, with interest. Malpractice feels cheap today and expensive tomorrow. The doctor who passed anatomy through expo will one day hold a scalpel in your local hospital. The engineer who bought his way through technical drawing will sign off a building your family will enter. The accountant who cannot reconcile figures will manage public money. When competence dies, the economy bleeds. Companies stop trusting Nigerian certificates. Investors look elsewhere. Government revenue falls, so salaries delay and schools decay. The teacher who collected a few thousand naira to aid cheating ends up in a country that cannot afford to pay them a living wage. We are eating tomorrow’s seed and blaming hunger on the soil. No nation can survive when its credentials are forged.
This indictment is not for everyone, and it would be unjust to paint all teachers with the same brush. In the same public schools, under the same poor pay and crowded classes, there are teachers who arrive early, prepare thoroughly, mark honestly, and stay back to coach struggling children without collecting a kobo. They buy charts with their own money, run extra lessons for free, and feel pain when their students fail because they know they could have done more. They see teaching as a vocation, not a transaction. It is their reputation that the bad eggs are dragging through the mud. It is their future that is being buried when certificates lose value. We must name them, celebrate them, and protect them, because they are the reason our education system has not completely flatlined. Their existence also proves that poor conditions explain desperation, but they do not excuse betrayal.
Technology and time are also running out on the cheats. CCTV in halls, biometric verification, and computer-based testing are closing the loopholes that once made malpractice easy. The teacher whose only value was leaking questions will soon have nothing to sell. Yet if we have not built real teaching in the meantime, we will be left with empty halls and empty graduates. You cannot replace pedagogy with policing. At some point someone has to actually teach, and someone has to actually learn. The generational cost is already showing. Every teacher was once a student who benefited from someone who failed them when they deserved to fail and encouraged them to try again. To turn around and teach dishonesty is to break that chain. The children we help to cheat today will be the adults who treat us in hospital, build our roads, and interpret our laws tomorrow. When they fail us, we will call it a failure of leadership. But leadership is taught in the small daily decisions of a classroom.
What must change, therefore, is not complicated, though it will be difficult. Schools must enforce credible supervision with rotated invigilators and unpredictable external monitors. Sanctions must be real and must apply across the board: dismissal and loss of licence for the principal running a miracle centre, prosecution for the invigilator collecting money at the door, jail terms for the WAEC or NECO official leaking papers, and penalties for ministry officials who accredit fraud. Parents who offer bribes must also face the law. Professional associations must set standards, enforce ethics, and protect members who refuse to participate. Whistleblowers must be celebrated, not victimised. Government must pay teachers properly and on time, not as a bribe for integrity but as recognition of its value. At the same time, teachers must return to study, attend training, and model seriousness. Those who treat teaching as a mere job must either recommit or leave, so that space is made for people with passion. Parents must change the question they ask. Stop asking “How much to pass?” and start asking “What did my child learn this term?” A society that demands learning will eventually get teachers who teach.
In the final analysis, examination malpractice is a contract with the future, and the terms are terrible. It promises immediate relief and delivers long-term ruin. The teachers aiding it are not saving children. They are digging their own graves. The principals, supervisors, and board officials enabling it are digging beside them. Yet the dedicated teachers among us prove that another path is possible. If we want respect for teachers, we must first give respect to the work of teaching. If we want a country that works, we must start with an examination hall that works. The choice before every teacher, parent and official is simple and severe. Do the work, or be buried by what you have avoided. The hole is already open. The only question that remains is who we want inside 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.
