Looking at the azure skies of success

Passing the test

I have just returned from a Pearson Vue Computer-based testing centre which is just about a 25-minute walk from my home, and I am happy to say I passed the test I took.

Last month, I attended two 2-hour sessions of a Microsoft Azure Training Day: Azure Fundamentals, training day, it was the first time, I had the opportunity to follow the sessions fully. I had been thinking of getting certifications for the Microsoft Azure track for quite a while but could not get myself motivated enough to engage.

This time, after attending the training day which came with a free voucher for the AZ-900: Azure Fundamentals examination which I decided to use. The voucher was to expire at the end of June, I had the feeling I knew just about enough to pass the test, yet I could not afford to be over-confident.

Materials and practice

There is a lot of study material at my disposal, and this was one I did not think required instructor-led guidance like I required for my PRINCE2 and TOGAF certifications, in late 2019. The Microsoft Learn site is quite useful though it is mostly text-based interspersed with video snippets. I got to Level 7 and completed about 60% of the modules, but it was drudgery all through.

A better resource was John Savill’s AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals Certification Course of a library of YouTube videos of just over 9 hours of material. Thankfully, John has not entirely lost his English accent even if he has acquired some American mannerisms apart from the possibility of being distracted by his bulging biceps, the instructions, demonstrations, and whiteboard depictions are easy to follow to grasp the detail of the course.

I committed time to that, playing back elements that weren’t all that clear to me at first viewing and over 4 days, I had gone through the course enough to have some confidence that I will pass the test. After which I attempted two separate free mock tests and set out for the examination this morning.

Keeping up and current

Thinking about it, I did my first vendor certification just over 28 years ago, then, I acquired the Certified Netware Engineer certification after some weeks of self-study, having paid £140 for two volumes of study material. That was a lot of money for my 1994 salary, but that set my career off on an exciting, fulfilling and rewarding experience.

It is funny that I am still doing vendor certifications in my mid-50s, not that is matters that much, but the sense of self-affirmation and the confirmation of knowledge and understanding is a good fillip to proving you can still keep up with technologies and new developments. I love what I do, and I will continue to challenge myself as much as I intend to improve myself and remain relevant in my industry and career, for as long as I can.

As I left the test centre, I called Brian who constantly informs me that I am more than capable to meet any situation; I can’t distinguish between truth and bias, but I am always encouraged and motivated by him, then on getting home, I called my mum because we had discussed this and there was my concern that I might be tripped by the nuances of reading the context of US English with a British mindset. I got by and that is all that matters.

Dreamscape: A test I have to pass

Playing truant for reason

One school report in secondary school labelled me a truant, to my parents, that word seemed to jump out of the paper and take on a life of its own in their displeasure and disappointment. I was supposed to be in the class, and I was not, I was in the library doing other things that interested me, but that was no excuse, I had to suffer the regimen of class attendance whether I was engaged and enthused or not.

Then when I was at Yaba College of Technology studying Electrical Engineering, there were classes I did not attend as there were times, I was completely clueless as to why I was there. I now put those circumstances to when I suffered clinical depression for which there was no respite or recourse, it was strange I found distractions that helped me through.

In life and in dreams

There was one class I just could not attend after being there twice, the lecturer and I cannot understand how he rose to that position, possibly through nepotism or blackmail, I can not tell. He definitely had a practical understanding of the electrical British Standards, if he had to communicate in any vernacular other than English, he probably would have been excellent, but the medium of impartation was English, and he just did not speak it. He had no proficiency, none at all, maybe if he tried Pidgin English, it grated in my ears; it was intolerable.

Yet, I had to fulfil attendance credits to take the examinations, we had to reach some sort of arrangement in which the truth of why I hated his class could not be part of my cause of mitigation. Something of that episode seems to haunt my dreams and this for years.

Found wanting for testing

Any scenario where I am to sit an examination, there is always one subject where I did not have the notes and completely unprepared that I was a sure bet to fail, it filled me with trepidation.

It generally was a subject that I could not read up on, I needed someone’s notes to get a view of the topics covered so that my revision was aligned. What I am thankful for is I have not had to sit any of these examinations in my dreams to find that I had a pen full of ink but no words to write.

Then in real life, in my finals at the Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, I realised on the Friday before my mathematics examination on Monday, I had no confidence I would pass the test. There were just too many things that were not in place. By the time I was in that school, I would usually have completed all my revision weeks before the examination week and simply allowed myself more relaxation or rest, maybe a bit of tutoring, but no stress.

Between reality and dreams

This mathematical conundrum bothered me, so I found a primary school and spent Friday evening and Saturday working through problems and finding ways to understand how the theorems and proofs worked, my insight opened up to new methods and better ways to do things, it was like I was blessed with revelation. By Sunday, I was giving tips and even reduced a brainbox proof from a two-page verbosity to the concision of half a page. I scored an A in that paper.

That said, I cannot understand why still in my dreams, I play truant for all sorts of reasons, I am unaware of what test I am about to take, I am aware of a subject in which I am too unprepared that I might just absent myself from the examination, I have to find a friend ready to share their notes and I am caused an unnecessary amount of distress. Just before I wrote this blog, it was mathematics, again.

Childhood: Learning to cope away from home

Sent away

As I was reaching the age of 10, having lived with my parents literally all my life apart from times when I was cared for by nannies when we were in England, they were thinking of where I would go to secondary school.

We lived in the North of Nigeria but they concentrated on trying to get me admitted into a secondary school in South-West Nigeria where my parents were from.

All down South and nowhere else

In fact, I cannot remember any instance where I was entered for any common entrance examinations or admission lists for any of the good secondary schools in Kaduna or Jos where we had lived for about 5 years.

Instead, I was taken out of school in January and put on a plane first to Ibadan where besides taking exams and one hair-raising incident where the driver of the vehicle I was in with 3 distant cousins left the steering wheel to me as we almost teetered over the edge of a ravine, only providence changed that course of history as I came into the most experience of sexual abuse in the week that I was there.

Liberties taken and voice lost

I returned home a bit tongue-tied, I had received many gifts but could not account for how I had given some away to ward off abuse which my parents took as evidence of me being a wastrel currying favour off people by being overly generous – how I should have spoken up but for the fear and loathing of my experiences.

Two weeks later, I was on a plane again to Lagos where I spent over four months out of school shunted between relations, grandparents and my cousins as common entrance examinations were scheduled throughout Lagos and Ogun States revealing stark contrasts between arithmetic that we did up north and mathematics that was the mainstay down south, I never knew the concept of negative numbers until then, it was an aunt studying Electrical Engineering at University of Lagos who helped me there.

Choices made from limited options

I probably attended 10 examinations in all completely away from the routine of school and the comforts of home that I had known all my life, it laid the foundations for what was to come when I had choices, I refused to go to one that shared its grounds with a cemetery, I had been sensitised to terrifying fear, in the ensuing months, something I never had before I went away.

Eventually I had one chosen and preparations for boarding school began – school uniform instructions poorly stated, a metal portmanteau, a machete/cutlass that was useless of the purpose it was intended for – cutting grass, it was heavy, blunt and probably it would have been better in the hands of a lumberjack than a scrawny tall 10-year old – they knew no better.

It was hell, just without the fire

I cannot elicit to any detail what informed my parents about this idea of sending me away apart from wanting to probably toughen me up and give me the opportunity to meet more of my close and distant relations as well as give me the environment to learn Yoruba.

Soon after I arrived at boarding school the process of toughening did toughen me as we found ways to compensate for the sadism and abuse that passed for discipline and corporal punishment sanctioned by the system of hierarchies of seniors and teachers – they all got away with it, our parents none the wiser apart from being assured that their kids were getting a comprehensive education for life ahead.

If I did have my own children, it is unlikely I would have acquiesced to this barbaric regime of treating children like stubborn mules that needed to be forced to respond and react to coercion imposed by inflicting pain – that is another story to be told.

Childhood: Last year at RSS

One morning in Form 5

It was during morning assembly, we were exempt sadly having been kicked out of boarding house the September before by a Parents Teachers Association that felt blanket punishment of everyone was better than determining who the culprits were who for the refusal of girls to come out to play had stoned their hostels harming the girls and damaging property during summer school.

It was literally a ruinous year for many because the strictures of boarding school were lost as parents had to find ways to handle their wards that had become day students where a majority had no family.

Substitutes of sorts

I was fortunate, I could stay with my aunt but the regimen of boarding school amongst peers after school for study, interaction and the preparation for final examinations had been lost.

To augment that, we attended remedial classes amongst those who had not been too successful the year before, but we were mixing with another crowd. With hindsight, I doubt it was extra classes we needed what we needed was the adequate setting for better understanding what we had learnt within the regular school system.

Our rotten lot

As if to compound the problem, the last session of the Sixth Form students who we had tussled with about positions of student leadership was leaving too and we found ourselves having to defer to our juniors who were now the student leaders.

That 3-set Sixth Form experiment was a disaster for our morale though even though until the time that it mattered to us, we literally adopted uncles and aunties of these sons and daughters of Anak who were giants in frame and knowledge to us puny kids barely into our teenaged years.

However, in Nigeria, no humiliation is too great for the punished because in some warped way of thinking, the punished will learn lessons, no one however audits those lessons to determine if they are the right ones.

The riot we became

What did I not see of those who were left to fend for themselves in town from parties to vices and ultimately a gang-rape that this time could not be swept under the carpet? The youngest in our year would probably have been around 14, I was barely 15 and the age range went up to about 23 or so.

I was quite tall for my age if my face did not belie a pre-pubescence of sorts, in the right crowd I did gel. At home, I also had my problems that made my parents agonise about where elements of my personality could have been derailed to become the reviled imp that had the tendency to suddenly shame them.

Seeds of life

It is probably then that the seeds had been sown that I could not possibly afford to have kids like me of what was visited upon my parents either from the emotional issues that were beyond my control that took a toll on all of us to the character issues that were in formation but had their wildly scary deviations – in the deep recesses of my mind even though I know now I am incapable of having them I still harbour the fear of having my own children.

As the examinations approached, we found study cells around town which got infiltrated with rumours of exam leaks and confidence tricksters circulated false answers to questions that many were smart not to use.

That morning

On that morning a teacher saw me in a classroom waiting and thought I was in a lower form skipping assembly, without first finding out, scolded me as they were wont to do ready to wield his cane when I told him I was in Form 5; sitting down, it seemed I could barely pull off the fact that I was in the right class.

When we completed our exams, the school did put together a valedictory service for us and for all the pride we have of having passed through Remo Secondary School, not one apology has been issued to the innocent boys who were unjustly punished in the Summer of 1980 apart from what the Vice Principal said that fateful afternoon whilst we packed our bags to leave – I know that these kids were not involved – and we weren’t.

Thought Picnic: Licking my wounds

The battles of the mind

And so I sought a place to lick my wounds battered and bruised from the realisation that I am not what I used to be.

Shorn of courage and confidence by reason of time, event and circumstance, each encounter is like I need to tiptoe on the heads of hungry river crocodiles to ford the water from this end to that.

It is hard to be the shadow of the man you used to be – brimming is daring and adventure, out to do feats that angels will shudder to contemplate – now, to be roused comes with doubt and foreboding, the wish for luck and the hope for a win. There must be a time again to lift up one’s head and declare boldly, I will not go down.

Uneasy and unfit

God knows I prepared but never with much rest in body, mind or spirit – I could not concentrate much as I wanted to get things done well and properly. Yes, I took one opportunity to put it off but maybe never with enough time to rethink what might be.

So, restless but not panicked, I went to bed with one last desire to get what I wanted in. It all made sense but I could not make sense of it as sleep came without the rest that should follow.

The die was cast for the deed this day and early in the morn before the cock crew I was wide-eyed, half-determined and slightly bothered – it had to be done.

One is slain and I was beat

There was a time I scheduled 3 tests in a day and got them all done in 70 minutes including coffee breaks that had become the stuff of memoirs to be scripted for legend.

Once, after a heavy night out and literally no study, we are given free vouchers for tests I thought were difficult, I was a somnambulist in auto-pilot as I passed the test half dozing and yawning better than a hippopotamus having fun.

My knees never wobble and I never get to shed a tear when I most need to find out if my tear ducts are still functioning or need a rinse out. I feel myself crying out loud within myself though around me is the deafening cacophony of silence that takes your imagination to the expectation of horror.

It was time to face it; two tests for the prize and thankfully neither your pulse nor your frayed nerves are calibrated for scores. With 25 minutes to spare I scaled the first and with 4 minutes to spare I flunked the second – only just.

Rise!

Back to the drawing board with the hope of more determination and resolve, I have 5 working days to revisit this thing and put it behind me.

I have to appreciate things are harder, I may not have as big a theatre to strut my stuff and thereby for the lack of practice you cannot perfect what you want to show yourself as confident in.

I have licked my wounds enough – Rise up man and go and take the world.

Nigeria: The need for improved English education

The need for Nigerian expression

I read Nmachi Jidenma’s blog titled Why every Nigerian on the Internet should start a blog [1] where she coordinates the editorial activities of CP-Africa.

One can easily see the premise of her argument; as usual some blogger with a big magazine profile receives a scam email purportedly from some Nigerian along the lines of what is commonly known as a 419 Letter [2] and finds the opportunity to fulminate.

When Peter Reilly who contributes to Forbes.com first wrote about the letter, he noticed a subtle change in the tone of a 419 letter from that of persuasion preying in the greed of the victim to fearful threats and is was only normal for him to default to stereotype with the headline Nigerians Switching From Greed to Fear [3].

It took one well-placed comment by a Nigerian resident in Nigeria to get Peter Reilly to change the title of his blog though the underlying URL still registers the original title; he then went one step further offering insightful research about the original of fraudulent scams and the resolution of some interesting cases.

Effective communication presages change

In the comments under his first blog he engaged the commenters and it appeared he was contrite enough to write the follow-up blog Fraud Has No Nationality- Apology to Nigeria [4] in what I felt was a display of maturity and interesting raconteuring, you had to hear him out.

However, back to the purpose of this blog, Ms. Jidenma noted that a Google search for “Fraud” almost always presented contextual results that made Nigeria prominent and this is exacerbated by the fact that there are not enough positive Nigeria narratives on the Internet to minimise the association between Nigeria and fraud.

That thinking is well placed but there are problems we do need to address, the comments posted on the Forbes.com posts ranged from a dispassionately objective criticism of stereotyping to somewhat unnecessary but naturally expected defensiveness.

An underlying problem

Now, having blogged for almost 8 years and reviewed many comments and blogs of fellow Nigerians on many Internet sites, I doubt flooding the Internet with Nigerian opinion without attention to content, quality and intellectual ability is the answer to the dissociation of fraud from Nigeria.

One statistic that buttresses this view comes with the announcement that only 30% of students passed English and Mathematics [5] in this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results and whilst this is an improvement on the 25% last year it is appalling.

The problems are self-evident, maybe the strictures of mobile Short Message Service (SMS) known as texting does have an effect where the restrictions of 160 characters forces users to use abbreviations and strange spellings of words that depend on some sort of decoding to make sense; that form of communication is becoming so mainstream that it might have crept into formal communications like what students put down in examinations.

The low results in mathematics are worrisome too because it suggests that students are not leaving school with basic numeracy skills needed for further education or the workplace.

A failing curriculum

Even though English is my mother tongue by reason of it being the first language I could speak and the circumstance of birth but I do remember the attention paid to our English classes from primary school in Nigeria where reading, writing and spelling lessons and tests were part of our curriculum.

In secondary school, we were voracious readers, the girls on everything that Barbara Cartland [6] wrote and the romantic pulp fiction of the Mills & Boon series [7], we the boys started off with Nick Carter [8] crime novels then James Hadley Chase [9] and graduated to Harold Robbins [10]; we all not missing the African writers and compulsory Shakespeare texts in formal English classes and the traditional English novels by celebrated writers as Kipling, Twain, Shaw, Haggard, Dickens, Orwell and others.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the James Hadley Chase novels even had the Nigerian price on the dust jacket or back cover of the paperback novels.

The English syllabus contains essential guides for reading and comprehension, composition, context, interpretation which should result in communication that is at least structured and coherent with the possibility of it being concise, maybe precise and hopefully original belying some admirable intellect.

What is needed

I dare say, only a few expressions on the Internet have passed the muster and much as I would love to see more Nigerians on the Internet with blogs, comments and opinions that show Nigeria in more positive light, there is much more that needs to be done in terms of the quality of communication they present whilst it goes without saying that the slide of examination performance was not sudden much as it seems precipitously low.

Too much time is being spent on religious and motivational books and very little on those with useful literary value that would broaden outlook and improve expression, we have become clones of “How To” themed books.

The need to return to formal and traditional modes of English and language expression cannot be overstated and it starts with correct spelling, structured sentences, the ability to crystallise thoughts, an understanding of correct punctuation and tenses, the daring to be objective and a broadening of the reading curriculum.

Then we can ensure whoever decides to own a blog is at the least redounding to the positive narratives of Nigeria with good communication, clear thinking and commendable expression.

Sources

[1] CP-Africa.com | Why every Nigerian on the Internet should start a blog

[2] Advance-fee fraud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Forbes.com | Switching From Greed to Fear

[4] Forbes.com | Fraud Has No Nationality- Apology to Nigeria

[5] AllAfrica | Nigeria: WAEC Results - Only 30 Percent Pass Maths, English

[6] Barbara Cartland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] Mills & Boon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[8] Nick Carter (literary character) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[9] James Hadley Chase - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[10] Harold Robbins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A library of society

The library

Getting a place to sit in the magnificent Amsterdam Public Library [1] is not an easy task especially when you arrive in the early afternoon.

The library offers free wireless internet access after registration; there are banks of computers on most floors with Apple iMacs and Windows PCs, a restaurant on the ground floor and the one the 7^th is a buffet restaurant of ingredients that get cooked for you after selection.

It is serious as it is social with seven floors, there is no doubt that the examinations season is round the corner, I have seen similar copies of high school examination preparation materials on desks as students swot and sometimes cram to get the best scores.

The people

Literally everyone one of them has a laptop, most of them are Apple iBooks but you can see other popular brands too. One even had an iPad and as he typed away at the screen, I thought about the luxury of fads without the feedback of clicking keys.

Everyone seemed to have one musical device of the other and the headphones were probably best suited for a recording studio, I doubt any were listening to anything classical.

Their scientific calculators are huge; it makes you wonder what new calculations have entered the curriculum since I left high school 3 decades ago.

The culture

They quite conveniently ignore library decorum especially when groups of friends band together in discussion that rarely pertains to the purpose for which they have come to the library.

Indeed social development is just as important as educational prowess, many people form their life-long networks from their teens and that matters a lot amongst the Dutch.

I have many a time lamented the fact that the Dutch with all their tolerance rarely have a social circle that extends beyond that which they formed since year dot. The ones that do in most cases have really broken free from the structure and plunge themselves into other settings by reason of having travelled and lived in other countries or also acquired for themselves foreign partners.

The annoyance

Yesterday evening there was a rather raucous group at my reading table who at one time reckoned they were being a nuisance when I looked up. However, some 20 minutes after, a particular lady who just could not keep it low got to me.

I banged my fists of the table in exasperation, reminded them they were in a library, conceded they needed to have discussions but admonished them to be considerate.

Now, I was not against their communicating but it fell completely silent and they appeared to self-censure each other when the decibel level rose and eventually they left.

The inconsiderate

Whilst I was minded to get the staff to deal with them, I felt it was important to gauge their reaction to my protest before seeking additional help.

Again, in settings like this, one is not sure if they will take kindly to being told off, some people just cannot bear to be told to exercise a modicum of civility.

In the end, not an apology was offered, not that it mattered, and the expectation of good manners will always leave me utterly disappointed.

Sources

[1] Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam

Amsterdam Public Library – Facts and Figures

Thought Picnic: Regaining the verve

Regaining the verve

It has recently become apparent that the wealth of professional experience and the almost enviable record of impact and radical change that has somewhat been the hallmark of my career over 23 years was no more turning heads as much.

Times when one would turn down opportunities because the people had put you through an interrogation of waterboarding and asphyxiation whilst waiting for a better opportunity that always eventually came have somehow passed.

My first job

My very first job was in a brewery just after secondary school, by arrangement of my father who was the Chief Accountant, I went for interview where the test of my knowledge of chemistry and physics for a laboratory assistant’s job put my pride at stake and obviously the reputation of my father where if I performed badly, it would reflect badly on both of us and possibly any other recommendations for employment my father makes.

They were impressed and on the way back from the interview, I had by reason of the moving vehicle fallen asleep as I was wont to leaving the driver to a reckless manoeuvre that had a laden truck ram into us from behind and still had us at fault with no eye witnesses.

I did start work on the following Monday but there was no time to reflect on how well I did, but by the time I left, I observed that the end of the line in the loading bay had some cartons of beer poorly packed, with broken bottles and in one instance there was a cockroach in a ready-to-go delivery.

Shaking it up

I suggested to my manager a quality checking procedure that meant randomly selecting 12 cartons at different times of the day to check for the quality of the contents, checking off a worksheet which fed back into the system to improve quality through all parts of the beer-to-bottle-to-carton process.

Each subsequent job where I have been allowed the latitude, I have been a change and improvement agent, just because it happens and just because it benefits the organisation and it was just a matter of course which when looked back on is radical in its effect and wonderful to behold.

Somehow, I have never been there long enough to reap rewards before another scheme called on my skills to do something simple and realise something complete, the knowledge passed on to the extent that one becomes too expensive to keep on – in any case, at that time, my work is usually done and pastures anew await.

Putting letters to the skill

Today, my marketing literature reads well but does not pass the muster because there are no letters validating basic knowledge even though the words speak of extensive experience from three countries supporting global enterprises in complex environments.

So, something needs to be done to get my stuff beyond those filters that prevent that first call, the contact, that chat, that interview and that job.

The joy of study for an examination was rekindled and I dusted some books, refreshed my knowledge on some obscure features and watched simulations of some activities and I prepped my system for some practice.

Having fun

I chuckled and laughed in the library as I watched the expression of the thinking that went into some processes, the apparently complex stuff being made simple and easy to grasp and understand.

I was having amazing fun preparing for an examination that I plan to take very soon and pass well, I would immediately update my curriculum vitae and send it out to those who matter with the hope that it would begin to percolate to the top.

Twice before, I scheduled three tests for the same day and did brilliant clearing the full certification in weeks, couple that with experience and a return to helping others in forums I have long been passive on and well, the makings of a bigger profile loom.

I am enjoying this and well, I am not throwing in the towel for what at certain times had me in the top 10% of experts in my field. I am even thinking of going back to university but there are pressing needs that need to be in order to chart that course confidently.

The fundamental lesson really is one has to change to remain relevant or the threat of irrelevance when not heeded to with radical change will leave you out.

Childhood: Shocked into adolescence

Send the child to our roots

Some memories came flooding in the other day about my childhood or is it my adolescence. Now, whilst I have written extensively about my primary school days, I realise I have barely scratched the surface of the wealth of stories to tell, I believe I would eventually visit those times, nothing would be strictly chronological in presentation I dare say.

My parents even though we lived in the North of Nigeria in Kaduna felt it was necessary I go to secondary school near my ancestral roots in the South where I could learn my father’s mother tongue of Yoruba properly – I never made much academic headway with Yoruba, I barely passed any of the examinations, though I did end up learning something.

They also had this feeling that sending me to boarding school would toughen me up; I had always lived a life of some privilege, much of which has hardly withdrawn once I left the confines of the parent-sanctioned borstal.

Steering to secondary education

So, in January 1976, I was put on a flight to Lagos where an uncle collected me and ensured I was able to attend a number of common entrance examinations to secondary schools – thankfully, there was no socialist fervour about selection, if you did well you did get noticed and get offered a place.

I had also been booked to attend an examination in Ibadan, I cannot remember which school it was but as we drove to the home of my hosts the driver got engaged in some distracting activity with the other kids and I found myself handling the steering wheel of the car with a gorge to the side of the road, the realisation that my turning had dramatic effect must have been seared in my memory that I never touched a steering wheel for another 15 years.

I had to learn the difference between arithmetic which we did in the North and mathematics which was done in the South. Negative numbers? Whose idea was that? I had the services of an aunt who was studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Lagos.

Between a cemetery and a forest

Eventually, a number of offers came, the nearest to my ancestral home was Odogbolu Grammar School, the other was Remo Secondary School in Sagamu where I had very close family.

I had a very terrifying experience when I returned home after 4 months down South when my aunt and our houseboy was chatting about appearances of evil and to the mind of an impressionable 10-year old there was fertile land for imaginations that could produce untold realities.

That night as my parents entertained guests, our kitchen was detached from the main building and as I went to place the dishes out at the washing area, I saw what I believed to be the devil and my life changed completely from then on, I knew fear, I knew terror, I found out that having my parents present did not save me from what my imagination could conjure for my seeing.

Anyway, that meant Odogbolu Grammar School was completely out of the question, the grounds were literally shared with a cemetery, I would have lost my mind if I chose that school.

Preparing for school

When we settled for Remo Secondary School there was the frenzied activity of acquiring uniforms, linen and other essential goods. The instructions seemed muddled, I ended up with grey shorts rather than green ones, and my cutlass was completely unusable for the activity we were to engage in.

The indelible ink of choice was Kandahar, and this was used to label all my effects, the school and house uniforms, the linen, my sandals, my pail, my mattress, my pillow and my metal portmanteau which was acquired from Panteka, the metalworks market in Kaduna – it was black with red dots and it had a hinge link for a padlock.

The first day at school was without much event, we arrived a few days before the seniors apart from the room seniors, fresh students had their own dormitory well away from the seniors.

Eventually, we were allocated our house groups, I was put in Adedoyin House that excelled in coming last in my first 3 years at school, it was a slow start but as soon as we began to settle in the reality of it all began to dawn on all of us.

Nigeria: Why Candidates Fail Our Examinations - WAEC

I am usually amused when I view the search words of visitors to my blog and find some seeking WAEC questions for one subject or the other. They usually end up on my blog Nigeria: WAEC Exam leaks are unacceptable. [1]

Now, these searches might be innocent, just of people seeking examples of past questions in their subjects of interest but a news story for the first time highlighted an issue I have been at pains to discuss for a while.

In The PM News, with the by-line, ’Why Candidates Fail Our Examinations’—WAEC [2], the West African Examinations Council tries to explain with some interesting reasons that I would tackle below.

There were mass failures from the examinations taken in November/December 2008 and the council lists the following issues

Unpreparedness for examinations

As far as the Council was concerned the standard of the examinations have not changed over the last few years but the attitude of students has changed. Maybe the examiners have become more stringent in their marking but the lack of preparation is quite plausible.

A good example of how that pervades the whole Nigerian system was when ballot papers for an election taking place on Saturday were still in South Africa on Friday. The National Electoral Commissioner believing all the papers would reach polling station in a country that has poor transportation and logistics.

There are too many examples of how preparation is not passed down in example and practice for the youth to strive to, we procrastinate and then hope that we can allow God’s will to correct our folly and in the process earn a miracle of success – no, it is a recipe for failure.

Poor grammatical expression

English is the business language of Nigeria, it is the glue of Nigerianness, it then behoves any Nigerian who wants to express the unity of that entity to master the language of that entity.

It is also the language of education and though for a majority it is not their mother tongue, there is no other alternative to expression when sitting examinations.

As I wrote in A malaise of inexactitudes [3], the Idea la need context is not sufficient for communicating ideas that are reviewed in answers to examination questions.

My mother was a WAEC examiner for 30 years and sometimes she read out answers to some Commerce questions and we all drew a blank, it was just impossible to understand what the candidate was trying to say before she had to read a grovelling appeal to be lenient in marking the same paper.

How much time can an examiner spend on divining the mind of the candidate through telepathy or clairvoyance before deciding that the answer is not catered for in the marking scheme and red-lines the whole stuff leading to a failure?

Failure to expatiate on points

I found this interesting, because Nigerians are generally given to the verbose rather than the precise. The questions have an intent derived from a syllabus that is public domain, the objectives indicated in the syllabus gives general guidance on what should be learnt and understood to tackle an examination offered by an institution.

Questions are phrased in such a way as to determine if the candidate has grasped those elements can relate those ideas in the context of their understanding.

If the candidate has no grasp of what is being asked, it is unlikely they would be able to expatiate on the points they list and hence show that they have mastered the topic.

A marking scheme might score for mentions but the better marks are in the detail that accompanies the mentions.

Misinterpretation of questions

This, I can very well agree with, first, it is a matter of comprehension – if the candidate has done the required study and understood the subject onto whether the student has the wherewithal to tackle questions that probe that knowledge.

Attention is paramount; the need to read the question more than twice and note clearly what points are required to be answered cannot be overstressed.

I am afraid to say that many do not pay close attention to the question and go off on a tangent doing their own thing but not fulfilling the main requirement.

Misinterpretation of questions - Doing your own questions

For instance, just over a week ago, I set a test on months in the Yoruba language which only 2 people tried. In the process, one commenter published the right answers to the questions for public viewing, destroying the need for the test and others published their own answers to questions that were not part of the test.

For any examiner, it would be annoying and really a bloody waste of time if they have to read through a diatribe only to find that it was completely irrelevant. It is a Nigerian malaise, I am afraid, because it also appears in comments to blogs.

On the sudden death of the wife of a Pentecostal church leader in Nigeria, I thought I was going to read she died at 75 only to read she died at 57. I was quite shocked at the death and then at the circumstances with the testimony of power in Christianity and the question of healing.

Unfortunately, I failed to excite intellectual discourse as it got subsumed in emotive, sentiment and hysterical fawning – basically, I was not supposed to as that question.

Illegible handwriting

We might write for ourselves, but when others have to read our writing it must not end up being an advanced course of deciphering cryptographic inscription.

I really feel for examiners who have to indulge in crude graphology to determine what the candidate is trying to say.

The fact is, writing is also a mode of expression, poor handwriting is poor expression, it is strange how after the writing lessons we have in primary school we end up with writing no better than animal tracks in the bush.

In my view, I think writing classes should continue into the early years of secondary school because once writing develops its personality and character, it can be impossible to adapt and change for legibility.

Wasting of time on unnecessary preambles

That probably speaks for itself, it would be different if I could say that it is an element of intellectual arrogance creating blinding ignorance but I have to ditch the word intellectual. People are wont to showing their knowledge without necessarily addressing the issue itself.

It is a waste of time on the part of the candidate, it wastes the time of the examiner and basically, it is just a waste of time.

Preambles? If only we really had to time to read through all that too, you are answering questions in examinations that have a set time in which to tackle the required questions.

Poor diagrams

We are not being asked to be artist but candidates striving to be scientists who can only make doodles are on to a failure. Diagrams require a bit of practice, lines that need to be straight should be, curves need to be regular and there is a world of difference between a diagram and a sketch.

Read wide

The last paragraph reads, “tasking candidates to read novels and newspapers”. You don’t say? That would mean there would be no time for the Bible, as if many read that to any level of understanding or comprehension.

Chxta [4] my blogging friend has many a time lamented the fact that many do not read. Reading expands horizons, creates inquisitive minds necessary to ask to the right questions and obtain good answers.

It helps people participate in intelligent debate and hones expression in ways that being spoon-fed doctrines, traditions and customs cannot begin to do.

Ask questions too

But then, we are averse to asking questions because our paternalistic society considers asking questions a sign of disrespect. It was interesting that in secondary school; very few of us did not see teachers as demigods, unapproachable and fiercely evil.

Religiously, we consign everything to God’s will, though I do wonder if we really do know God’s will but use our fear to enquire borne of our human relationships as indication of disrespectfulness to God if we were to dare to ask questions of God.

My frustration on the question I asked about healing for today was fully vented when I asked for a Gamaliel [5] to step up to the conversation; I was already fed up of listening to the Sons of Sceva. [6]

In fact, that is why in a very religious Nigeria many fail in a lot of their endeavours because they tackle issues like the Sons of Sceva rather than a learned Gamaliel, we need to approach these things with a sense of authority which comes from preparation, understanding and application. If God put a brain in man, it must be there for a purpose – Use it.

Sources

[1] Nigeria: WAEC Exam leaks are unacceptable [akinblog.nl]

[2] The PM News - Nigeria’s leading evening newspaper - ‘Why Candidates Fail Our Examinations’—WAEC

[3] Thought Picnic: A malaise of inexactitudes [akin.blog-city.com]

[4] Chxta's World

[5] Gamaliel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] Sons of Sceva: Spiritual authority and warfare