The winners’ row at this year’s Mike Okonkwo Essay Competition held at the MUSON Centre, Onikan, was unusually scanty last Thursday. There were only three winners to be rewarded instead of the usual 10.
In past editions, the top 10 winners graced the occasion with large contingents from their schools for the prize-giving held as part of the Bishop Mike Okonkwo annual lecture programme. However, this year was different.
Chief Examiner for the competition, Prof Akachi Ezeigbo soon revealed why in her Examiner’s Report. She said the judges were disappointed to find that most of the best of the 2,185 entries received from secondary school pupils all over Nigeria were products of plagiarism while those that were not were of poor quality.
As a result, the professor of English from the University of Lagos (UNILAG) said not up to 10 candidates of the lot who wrote on the topic: Overcoming the Nigerian security challenges: A panacea for national growth and development, could be short listed for the second stage of the competition.
She said: “Unlike in previous years, the quality of entries for this year’s competition is rather low. The evidence of copying, collaboration, lifting from newspapers, textbooks, the internet and other electronic sources which we see in the entries for this year is not just higher In relation to previous years, but has assumed a frightening dimension to warrant a call for some intervention.
“Not only have our students perfected the habit of uncritical derivation of materials from sources they are unwilling to acknowledge, they have also learnt to shamelessly present the materials as their own work. One is inclined to think that teachers and parents are actively aiding the practice through collaboration or deliberately overlooking it. The immediate result of this phenomenon was that we were unable to get the usual 10 essays on which to base the second leg of the competition. We only managed to get five.”
Prof Ezeigbo also said two out of the five essayists who were shortlisted for the second stage performed poorly under examination condition when they were told to write on: Solving the problems of examination malpractices in the Nigerian educational system.
“Two candidates who scored high marks during the first stage could not defend their performance. We found enough evidence in the performance at the second leg of the competition to show that they had obtained help in the main examination,” she said.
Lamenting the judges’ findings, Bishop Mike Okonkwo, the Presiding Bishop of The Redeemed Evangelical Mission (TREM) in whose honour the competition is organised yearly, said Nigeria should look to nursery school pupils for redemption.
“Just ordinary essay competition, see how students copied. We need to go to the kindergarten and nursery schools to begin to raise a fresh crop of Nigerians that will put it in their minds that integrity pays. If we are looking at the people in secondary school and tertiary levels, we are wasting our time,” Bishop Okonkwo, who turned 68 the next day, said.
Winners of the competition also condemned the malpractice, saying that it is not ultimately in the interest of the pupils.
First prize winner, Folatomi Alli-Balogun of Vivian Fowler Memorial College for Girls, who was rewarded with N100,000, laptop, trophy, plaque prizes as well as three computers and printer for her school, said she would have been unsatisfied with copying other people’s work. She said pupils may be inspired by others but should learn to be creative on their own.
“If you are looking at your work and what you have written is not yours, you don’t get satisfaction. You can read textbooks and use the internet as inspiration. For my essay, there was a lot of pressure on me to excel because my school enters every year. I was a bit hard on myself and wrote and cancelled twice before I wrote something I was satisfied with, she said.
Praising the transparency of the competition, second-placed winner, Mark Nwanbiankea of the Lagos State Senior Model College, Badore said pupils who work hard excel. He added that his English teacher, Mrs Olusola Shobola, taught him to not to lift work from the internet.
“I feel privileged to have gone to a school where we do not lift (copy) other people’s work. We have a programme we do on assembly called Impromptu, where you are called out to speak on any topic without prior preparation. My English teacher is one of the people who helped me and taught me to write without lifting from the internet,” said Mark, who was rewarded with N75,000, a plaque and two computers for his school.
Third place winner, Samuel Edet of Government Technical College, Calabar, who got N50,000, a plaque and a computer for his school, said his elder brother taught him to acknowledge owners of original work appropriately.
“If I had used another person’s work, I would have acknowledged my source to give credit to the original owner. My elder brother taught me to do so. He does a lot of writing and he is my mentor,” he said.
Describing the practice of ‘helping’ pupils as inappropriate, some teachers and parents told The Nation that it undermines the abilities of those so assisted.
Mrs Omotayo Alli-Balogun, mother of the over all best essayist, said such students pay for such misdeeds in future.
“Parents who cut corners for their children are not helping them. They will not be with them forever. At one point in time, nemesis will catch up with them,” she said.
Folatomi’s teacher, Mrs Chinyere Udunwa, said pupils who are helped are not inspired to succeed.
“We don’t write essays for any child; we give them proper guidance and you marvel at what they can do. There is a tendency for children to want to be spoon-fed but task them and you will be surprised,” she said.
Principal of the Lagos State Senior Model College, Badore, Mrs Zainab Abdulkareem said all members of the society should join hands to fight malpractice.
“We don’t allow cheating in my school; that is why Mark could come back better. By the time all hands come to fight it, it will reduce. It is a phenomenon that all schools are involved in,” she said.
Folatomi’s winning essay was in many ways like the lecture delivered by guest speaker, Dr Kalu Idika Kalu at the event.
The former Minister of Finance and National Planning described how insecurity in Nigeria has negatively affected peace, stability and socio-economic development.
He linked these failings to the disrespect for the rule of law which if supreme, would ensure that wrong doings are punished.
To tackle insecurity, Kalu said Nigeria has to first address problems of “poor leadership, bad politics, poor governance, inadequate dispensation of justice and entrenched cronyism.”
In her essay, Folatomi urged all Nigerians to work for the peace and progress of the country.
“Every citizen can combat insecurity and insurgency, and bring about peace by working hand in hand with security operators to analyse the under-takers that are slowly putting our nation to sleep, and conquer them,” she wrote in her conclusion.
