Some weeks ago, the internet and the nation(my country , Nigeria) at large were thrown into a disturbing state when a lot of students who went for a very popular and compulsory exam returned very late at night, 11pm. It was said that they wrote the exam at night instead of during the earlier scheduled start and close time of 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., respectively.
It was reported that they wrote the examination under torchlight in dark classrooms. In fact, it wasn’t merely a report but a real occurrence because we had relatives who went for the exam and threw us into a state of fear when they were unreachable at the time they were supposed to have returned home.
Guess what caused that delay?
It was said that there was a leakage of the examination questions, and the management needed to avoid the consequences of that. So, they decided to set another set of questions, and by the time they were done and had distributed them to various states and locations in Nigeria, time had already gone far, and that led to the writing of the exam at night.
The whole story sounded to me as if I was watching a movie. It’s so hard to believe what is happening in the country I belong to—to the extent that it has badly affected the educational sector.
Imagine if something bad had happened to the children who went for the exam, especially since some centres closed as late as 10:00 p.m., and the students had to walk home that night. Things like kidnapping or harm could have occurred. Oh my days! May God help us!
I know they didn’t plan for this because it was a sudden occurrence, and clearly, the leakage was done by someone within the management. But aside from that, the world has evolved a lot with technology, and the system should have improved significantly in terms of securing examination questions.
Anyway, it has happened—it has reduced the reputation of that academic sector in Nigeria. I'm sure they’ve taken note of the issue and are making efforts to ensure something like this never happens again.
