The Private Schools Scam in Nigeria

The systemic collapse of Nigerian education is no longer news, but from being bad, it is now becoming worse with the recurrent rampant cases of examination malpractices reported at all levels.

The prevailing culture of impunity of the corrupt ruling class is now exhibited by majority of Nigerian children in secondary and tertiary institutions with mass failures recorded in the prerequisite examinations. The most shocking were the last results of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) of 2012. Only 3 candidates of the total 1, 503, 931 who sat for the UTME scored 300 and above! So, the remaining 1, 503, 928 scored less than 300!

The question is why did the students from the so called elitist private schools where prohibitive fees are paid fail to score up to 300?

What happened to their so called world class standards and first class tutors?

Why did they fail to excel and prove that they are better than the public schools?

So, why should these private schools be charging hundred of thousands to even one million naira as annual school fees when they cannot guarantee the success of their students?

Why should parents spend a million naira on the secondary school fees of their child and the child fails to pass the ordinary matriculation examinations in Nigeria?

Therefore they have been ripped off by these private schools. What an open scam?

The fact is these private schools have failed woefully to produce brilliant students and scholars, because majority of their teachers are not certified and qualified to teach!

Instead of producing brilliant whiz kids of scholarship, these dubious private schools are producing whiz kids of hip hop and pornography.

Nigerian students sit for an exam.

These private schools cannot afford world class teachers who are not even available in Nigeria, because the local colleges of education have also collapsed and cannot produce good teachers for Nigerian pupils and students.

Majority of the students in the colleges of education were those who failed to gain admission into the polytechnics and universities and their last resort was to go the colleges of education. Moreover, most of them cheated to pass their secondary school certificate examinations before they could gain admission into the colleges of education.

Now these students driven by desperation and frustration into the colleges of education would later graduate and get employed by majority of the private schools to teach innocent children of ignorant parents who are hoodwinked and swindled by the proprietors of the private schools to pay exorbitant school fees for what they think is world class secondary school education by operators of private schools who have lied and tricked them by fishing in the troubled waters of the systemic collapse of modern education in Nigeria.