By Rilwan Muhammad
When the news of this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) was announced last week, I didn’t feel like checking the result on that very day. I wanted first to hear from my friends whom we sat for the examination together in one of those centres where the invigilators would allow you to do some closed-door interaction with your fellows. When I registered, I deliberately chose the centre. It’s my school.
I didn’t want my parents to know that the result was released, so I avoided seeing them throughout the day. This my father that would ask everyday whether or not I was reading hard to be able to write my exams with consummate ease and get to university to study one of those ‘marketable courses’ that would fetch and land you in the money. If he knew the result was released, he’d keep pestering me to check it.
I knew what trouble I went through answering the UTME questions; that was why I wasn’t in any haste to check the result. How and why would they ask such questions! Even the teacher that volunteered to answer the physics part of the paper had to surreptitiously walk out of the hall and hide himself in one dusty office shared by three of our teachers. But he was stopped. That physics teacher is very kind, but the principal of our school was always in quarrel with him, saying he (the principal) would report him (the physics teacher) to the Education Secretary of our local government. By helping students with answers, the principal warned, we would become lax academically. I heard the other staff with the physics teacher’s idea had to sit the principal down to tell him to stop being strict. Even at the PTA meeting, I heard our parents had rained abuse on him. It’s from that moment that he stopped being strict.
Many students from neighbouring local governments preferred sitting their exams in our centre because they would be allowed to use and browse the internet on their smart phones. But last two years when the JAMB people visited the centre and saw the conduct of the examination, they suspended the centre for one year. Only God knows the amount of effort expended by the big people of our town.
By the way, it’s back now.
But the issue now was, one wouldn’t be allowed to use even one’s phone. No teacher was willing to help. Perhaps there’s a new modality put in place.
I knew there was problem when I entered the examination hall. Until this year, students would just enter into the hall without being searched.
Two police officers, the other with long moustache that needed trimming, searched my pockets lest I’d something stuck in them. I wanted to slide N1000 note into the hand of one of them before the search began, but everybody was feasting their eyes on me.
At the hall, I checked and found my seat – I was to occupy seat number 10. As soon as I settled on the chair and raised my head a little, I caught a glance at one camera – they say it’s called CCTV, it captures all movements.
I didn’t, at first, connect the dots when they requested we use our national identity card. These people meant business this time around. But why would they be this serious? Aren’t we in Nigeria? If they want to fight corruption, how much did we steal? Shouldn’t they start with the big men who siphon the public money?
By this time, I thought, the website that provides answers which I subscribed to would have sent the answers. The phone was with the police officer who searched me. I didn’t want to think about settling it with him to get the phone, all I needed now was to concentrate and recall some of the things I learnt in class. I decided to start with Use of English. However, as I couldn’t make out the questions from the book they prescribed, I closed my eyes and quickly chose the answers that came to my mind. Had I known, I’d have followed my friends to the evening classes they attended prior to the exams.
My plan was to sit for the exams in those miracle centres where good results are guaranteed. But my father decided against it. Later as the result came out, I learnt even the miracle centres couldn’t make a thing about making it all their way: all leakages have been blocked, they said.
I checked my result two days after my friends have checked theirs. Only three of them got above 180 marks.
At school, I have always said that I’d not go to those small colleges or polytechnics. With my 65 marks, not even the college I detested going would offer me admission.
My father once seized my smartphone. He said it’s distracting me from reading. One day, I sneaked into his room and fetched it. It wasn’t hard to locate where he kept it, and he wouldn’t reckon I’d enter his room and get my phone.
Me that has over ten thousand followers on Twitter, how can I spend a day offline! My friends joke I’m now becoming something of an influencer.
When some of our friends said they don’t do Twitter, I laughed and told them that it wouldn’t help them become rich. Let them go and read all the books in the world if they like.
Even with the manifest mass failure in the UTME, these JAMB people are saying it’s a lie. They said we were ill-prepared.
How couldn’t we perform below expectations when they have changed everything? Even the syllabus – I know I didn’t read it – but it wasn’t from it that they based their questions. Even though I can’t recall where I put the IBASS (Integrated Brochure and Syllabus System) and the CD they gave us after completing our registration, I know many people who read it and yet flunked the exams.
Why are they shattering our dreams? We that want to become big people in the country.
These big people have connection. Even if you’re not among them, so far you know one of them, you can get your way through.
I have reasons to say that my friends who got 200 marks and above, it’s connection their parents have that got it for them. One of them, his father is a university lecturer. Who knows what connection he has. Even though they swore to me that they read hard, that their parents always forced them to read, that they were not allowed to use smartphones; I still maintain that they couldn’t get the points they got by their sheer efforts.
Rilwan Muhammad writes from Jigawa, and can be reached via 07061124918
reedwandk@gmail.com
