I remember my one year compulsory service to my country (Nigeria), the part where I was posted to happens to be a place I do not understand a word they say in their dialects due to the differences in ethnicity, I'm from the western part of the country while where I was posted to was the southern part of the country.
I was posted to a primary school to complete my one year service after few weeks of our orientation at the camp, my travelling experience to the community was something I will still share but definitely not today, so lemme quickly get back to the subject matter, So we,i and few colleagues of mine were warmly welcome to the place of our assignment by the head and the rest of the workers where we were posted and lemme also remind you that it's school, a primary school (grade 6) in the community.So, after the welcoming and the introduction,, we were allocated to different classes to teach and I was allocated to the highest grade to teach and according to the headmaster, I looked very calm to handle the class which was given to me which I did by God grace.
So along my few weeks of service, i noticed this (headmaster) was more interested in selling books than any other things, which i quiet remember a couple of times he would call me to his office, telling me to force these children to buy all ALL the textbooks they need and if any of them refuses to comply, I should send them back home. Funny enough, most of these children are over age and not even ready to come to school due to the type of environment they grew up because they don't really see any value in education, even to those still managing to come, it took a whole lots of effort to make them come as we had to go from house to house, door to door to convince some of their not so learned parents. I had to address the issue by pleading to the headmaster to make only the maths and English textbooks compulsory so as not to send them back home not until ONE DAY.
When the section was about rounding up, it's the duty of the teacher to prepare the examination questions on what the children have been taught so far, but to my greatest surprise, the headmaster instructed all other teachers and my colleagues to prepare their class examination questions except me.
So i asked why mine should be different and his response was the examination questions for that particular class(my) would be coming from the ministry of education of that state and I said ok.
So, there's this development service we usually attended once in every week (Wednesday) where we get to meets with our fellow colleagues from other communities too though from the same local government. I saw some old friends at the orientation camp and we got talking about our place of assignments and I asked about the preparation of the examination questions, buh to my greatest surprise I was told that they are all to prepare their questions in their various school by themselves at all levels.
I was really furious and i had to control myself till the day of the said examination. what actually happened was the local government happened to be one of the oil producing community in the country and there are some crude oil dividend they enjoyed which one of them is FREE SCHOLARSHIPS till the University to all the indigens of the community which my headmaster son also happened to be one of them and the boy is even in my class, buh not punctual, always skipping school, he may decided not to come to school for weeks and lemme also remind you that this 'boy' hasn't been in school for weeks, not until I saw him on the day of the examination and his father decided to prepare the examination questions.....
So,On the day of this examination, his son came and when all these children were all seated to write, the headmaster came into the examination Hall with a big brown envelop filled with question papers and said "I believe you will all perform wonderfully well because I know you've been taught and I prepared this questions based on what you've been taught.
I said excuse me sir, you said "YOU" set the questions and he said yes....reminded him he said the questions will be coming from the ministry of education and he kept quiet, asked him why wasn't I allowed to prepare the questions....he still kept mute and I announced to the students to go home that there will be no examination. The students all went back to their various home, you need to see the joy on their faces after they were told to go back home lol, so after all that happened, a report got to the community council and we were all summoned to the community meeting by their elders and chiefs, which we were both told to explain what happened.... after all the explanation and much deliberation, I was told to go and prepare the examination questions for the students which I did, and many of these students performed very well. But with those that had good grades were shortlisted for scholarship....they wrote the scholarship examination with some other community students from different schools.....a girl from my class emerged the winner and won the scholarship and is still on scholarship as I type...
This news got to me after I had left the community, I was no longer in the community even when this scholarship examination was written.
This is a community that iI know nothing about these children, their language nor related to them, buh I had to stand up for what was right and just
If it was to be you, would you have done things differently or still act the way I acted?????
Thank you so much for your time and thank you for reading....stay blessed as always.
All images are mine
