Education is the cornerstone and bed rock of any meaningful development. It is a key to success and the only bridge across ignorance and illiteracy.

It is a means to an end that can take one to the top of the mountain. It is for this reason people can do all it takes and how much it costs to seek for it. The sacrifice for seeking knowledge includes among other things; living in hunger, engaging in hard labour, spending huge amount of money, having sleepless nights and restless days.

However, the story is different today, in that seeking for knowledge is seen as time wasting and time consuming. This is because; today’s students have simple ways of passing examinations since education is measured by one’s paper qualifications (certificates). Thus, education is now regarded as a simple commodity that can be bought and sold. Students no longer value their teachers let alone value what they give. In fact, our present educational setting is ‘students first’ and then, ‘their teachers’. Thus, a teacher can simply be fired at the expense of a student.

Consequently, teachers no longer have value or even relevance in the society. The parents that are supposed to protect the image of teachers in the eyes of students have now device a means of painting different pictures to them. And the result is good teachers are now seen as conservatives and the bad ones as nothing but massagers. Our schools have turned out to be market places where we buy and sell results on the basis of competition. All these negative vices are the results of one canker called ‘Miracle Centres’ where certificates are awarded like birthday gifts. Prospects of these centres are now determined by the numbers of success they record in students SSCEs. The number of As and Bs students get speak volume of the attraction they gain from parents. Thus, student can now pass their SSCE at credit levels without sighting the exams centre even for once, let alone sitting for any exams.

The impact of the above is production of empty graduates that add nothing but nuisance to the society. This because, statistics show that more and more Nigerians are graduating from higher institutions of learning, but majority of them have become like a completed project that adds little or no value to the labour force, since companies now see them as unemployable. They don’t have required knowledge not to talk of requisite skills in that they came through dubious means and passed through substandard examinations. It is for this the writer believes that more than 60 percent of students in our various institution can be withdraw for poor academic performance if they are to be evaluated on normal academic standard. The reason for this is not farfetched; a lot of our graduate cannot read and write much to talk of speaking fluent English.

It is however worth noting that everyone seems to have a hand in the emergence of this cancer that is fast killing the standard of education. First, we must examine the role that homes play. How well are the parents discharging their responsibilities, in terms of ethical upbringing of their children so that they can shun what is evil? Before a child thinks of cutting corners, the child must have the support of the family. Alas! The parents not only supporting their children to engage in malpractice but also bargain on their behalves. Hence, parents go as far as buying leaked papers for their children because they want to present them as brilliant in the eyes of the society. Sometimes, parents only present certificates to their children while sitting comfortably at home without letting them know where and how they get the certificates.

Second, the larger society also shares from the same situation as the values that we promote in our society today is not such that promote hard work but laziness and cutting corners. That is why everyone seems to be corrupt and the worse part of it is that it is seen as a normal way of life. Third, the teachers too are not left behind; they are now used as machineries that sell their labour and productivity to those who that can afford it. The result of the above is the increase of private schools at the expense of public ones that used to be the best of all times. Public schools are now a shadow of themselves when compared to what they were like in the late 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s. Finally, the government too should be blamed on these vices; they promote corruption, cutting corners and unethical values themselves. They are also not in a position to assert themselves as the moderating force for the development of positive values and ethics in the society. In fact they provide an atmosphere where all these negatives can be perpetrated. For instance, In Nigeria’s budget, the government has continued to appropriate funds less than one third of the 26% recommended by UNESCO to education and they have continued to express disguised optimism that the education system will improve.

As long as we continue like that, people will continually get wealthy and we can never ask for the source of their wealth; people will always get certificates and we don’t have the zeal to ask for how they arrived at such certificates. In the end, things will get worse. We therefore need to go back and address our general values, materialism, certification and other things that are attached to educational sector. And in doing that standard should be our watch wall. Unless and until we do that, our today will bad, our tomorrow will be worse and the future of our children will be the worst ever. God Forbid!

Hassan Bala, Lecturer, Department of Private Law, Faculty of Law, ABU, Zaria