Photo by Austrian National Library
During my second year in school, something crazy had happened. During the end of every semester, students are expected to submit their practical reports. These reports are what the technician or practical lecturers go through to know if that student had learnt anything or not during practical classes. By law, each reports are meant to be different because it is a general believe that every student understood the practical in their own unique way.
Well, during one of these submissions, a colleague had informed us that the technician had requested that we submitted the reports with a mandatory one thousand naira fee, failure to pay this money would result to an automatic failure.
Now, collecting money like this was illegal but this wasn't the first time we were hearing about something like this, so some had paid. I didn't pay, not because I wasn't going to but because I didn't have enough cash on me. But somehow, after the money had been paid by the few students who had money to pay that day, the head of department had somehow heard about it and the whole thing had turned into a really huge case, both technician and students were almost sent packing.
But that was few years ago. Recently, about three months ago, the same thing had happened, but this time it wasn't a practical technician involved, it was a senior lecturer who was extorting money from his final year students who were getting ready for their seminar defence. He had asked them to pay him so that he could help them pass and not stress them.
Somehow that had also leaked but as usual, the lecturer had found a way to escape the charges without getting arrested or sacked. Now, one would think that with all of this happening, the other lecturers would be careful and maybe not collect bribe anymore, at least for the time being, nope.
Earlier today when I went to school, myself, along with my project colleagues had been called into my project supervisors office. He had told us he wanted to talk to us about our project and we had all thought that maybe he had finally agreed on the topics we had presented to him, only for him to start requesting for money.
According to this man, he wants nothing less that seventy thousand naira and the price isn't negotiable. It's either we pay it and pass or we don't and get ready to come back next year to rewrite the project. Looking at all of this just discourages you to even want to be in school because it's no longer about learning, but now about how much you can pay to pass.