“SORTING” AND REMEDY IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS

“SORTING” AND REMEDY IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS 

Examination malpractice has been decorated, fuelled, encouraged coded, branded, rebranded, garnished and made lucrative in Nigeria that it is today a house-hold name in our various homes and institutions of higher learning. It is adjudged the black sheep that is playing the devil with our education system. The questions hungry for reply over the years are (a) who are responsible for its “nurture” and widespread? And (b) how is this carried out?

It is therefore not a surprise to state that everyone is culprit student, teachers, parents and government officials. Also, the operation of this eye-sore is carried out at different stages. We have the pre-examination stage where students and lecturers alike conspire to prepare unauthorized materials (phones, runs, leakages, Nje, etc) into the examination hall. There is also the examination stage: this stage serves as the engine room of the eye-sore. The activities here include impersonation, communicating through exchange of answer scripts or exchange information relevant to the examination. Finally, there is the Post Examination Stage. This stage is the last resort. At this level, all hopes lost at previous levels are gathered ether in monetary term or kind performance. This is where actual, valuable, adequate but “illegal” consideration are passed among actors. The best nomenclature to describe these abnormalities at this stage is sorting.

Viewed differently, sorting means different thing to different people. To the users of English Language, “it is an operation that segregates items into groups according to specified criterion”. To the actors in tertiary institutions, sorting is a common parlance that refers to the criminal process whereby students and lecturers exchange marks for money or any specified consideration. For the purpose of this paper, I will be interested in the later meaning.

Students pass different colours of envelops with name and matriculation number written on them to lecturers for exchange of marks. As soon as a new lecturer is assigned to course, the first thing students ask is “Does he/she collects? Regrettably, these persons (lecturers) hired to transfer knowledge and character that will cause a relatively permanent change in behaviour (learning) allocate marks (scores) where there is no one.

The offshoot of the above is a puncture on our educational system. We now have half-baked graduates; the values of hardwork and diligence are crippled while all forms of criminality including petty robbery among make students and prostitution among female students are encouraged just on an attempt to “cross the bar”. Sorting is today a bandwagon in our campuses that the few “saints” of lecturers who still say no (for now) to this crime are branded “alien”.

Several factors are responsible for the spread of this evil in our schools. Chief among them is the over dependence on certificate as a sine qua non for employment. This has led to a crazy rush for certificate and not knowledge. This tall quest for certificate carries along with it the menance called sorting where lecturers insist that they sleep with female students or both sexes pay for a course before they could pass. There are cases of “mark racketeering” in tertiary institutions. Lecturers allocate cash price to each grade. We have a case where “A” goes for N30,000, “B” goes for 20,000, “C” goes for 15,000, “D” and “E” goes for 10,000 and nothing less. They go as far as allocating or predicting the number of “A^s” as the case may be for a course. This is ugly. Other factors include students’ fear of failure, lack of confidence in oneself, lack of adequate laws and poor implementation of the few existing ones regarding examination malpractice generally and sorting in particular. If appropriate punishments are melted on offenders it would have served as deterrent to others and the menance would have been a thing of the past in Nigeria.

Regrettably, the menance called “sorting” has brought us many woes. It has not only ushered in professional inefficient but also brings shame and embarrassment to families of those cut in the “deed”. It brings unfulfilled dreams and above all, lowers the standard and consequently, barnishes the respect, values and acceptability, of Nigerian certificates globally.

For every injury, there is a remedy. This is inline with the legal maxim, “ubi jus ubi remedium”. Therefore, if “Nigeria” and “Nigerians” are ready to bring back the sanity and glory of education, we must rise up now. Our brothers and sisters in the parliament should come up with purposeful legislations forbidding sorting in schools and attaching stringent conditions as penalty. Tertiary institutions should formulate rules and regulations to eliminate sorting as well as set up a Disciplinary Implementation Committee” (DIC) to monitor, discipline and prosecute offender. Membership of such committee should be based on personal integrity and leadership qualities. Lecturers should be given only two weeks ultimatum after examination to submit results/booklets. Booklets of examination should be first of all be submitted to the committee who will register them and rule/cross all un-used spaces in the booklet so that students/lecturers are not given the opportunity to re-write scripts after examination.

If the above are fulfilled, and the words of Abraham Lincoln that “it is more honourable to fail than to cheat” is given any thoughtfulness, then tertiary institutions will get rid of sorting. 

KPEA-UE, BARIYIRA SIMPLE

DEPARTMENT OF PRIVITE AND PROPERT LAW

FACULTY OF LAW, RSUST.