As a Youth Corps member, I arrived my place of primary assignment with so much zeal—it was time to serve my fatherland. Being posted to Delta state, and having studied geology, I was almost sure that one of the many oil and oil serving companies littering the oil-rich wet landscape of Warri would smile and offer me a place.
I was wrong—it was rather an ill-informed hope.
When the postings were made public, a disappointed me made his way to Umunede village, to add value to the lives hundreds of secondary school students, many of whom are incapable of making coherent sentences in English.
It was my calling—the oil firms have failed me, but I was not going to fail those youngsters who the system has woefully failed. I was going to make a mark. I was going to make an impact in their academic lives. I was sure of that—well, at least, so did I think.
After I had been assigned subjects and classes, I began my work in earnest, taking my time to explain things over and again, trying to carry the most not-so-intelligent among them along. I explained that they could call my attention at any point in time and can come to me any time with any question.
I struggled real hard to explain Integrated Science to JSS3 students some of whom are regrettably armed with intellectual firepower of primary six pupils elsewhere. It was hard and laborious. Some picked up, many others were complacent.
I could not understand why they were so complacent. I would teach and teach and explain and explain and the majority of the class would just be staring at me. Not the I-don’t-understand kind of stare, it was, rather strangely, the you-are-stressing-yourself-a-lot kind.
When JSCE began, a representative of the school approached me to ask if I would accept the honorable contract of solving the exam questions in the hall so everyone can replicate it in their answer scripts. I would be handsomely paid for it. It was then it began to really sink in.
Aside the examination fees, almost everyone had paid ‘expo’ fees, so they could not be more bothered than a car can be bothered about flying to give their best to what I was teaching them.
And to think that parents—real parents consciously paid ‘expo’ fees for a student in JSS3 and an exam representative mandated so many students to pay the fees says a lot about where we are headed in terms of education as a country.
I am of the opinion that until we repair the foundations—until we begin from primary level to provide good quality education, then expand into secondary and tertiary institutions manned by administrators and teachers who are qualified to academically give shape to the destiny of these youngsters, we will keep producing shitty graduates who can neither fit in as traders nor employable and trainable hands.

In Nigeria, external exams and at least ONE staff willing to say the answers while the Invigilator sips meat pie and chilled malt, obviously his/her bribe are like...