Miracle centres and illusion of merit

In the peculiar parlance of Nigeria’s educational landscape, the term ‘miracle centre’ is not a metaphor. It is not a nickname for excellence or innovation. It is a cynical euphemism for corruption, an established system of academic fraud that enables students to pass public examinations through organised malpractice. These so-called miracle centres, far from being places of learning, are factories of falsehood. Their stock-in-trade is not knowledge but manipulation, not merit but mediocrity masquerading as success.

The Federal Government’s recent directive mandating examination bodies to clamp down on these centres is welcome, if not long overdue. For decades, miracle centres have operated as open secrets. Everyone knows them. Many can name them. Some have profited from them. Their existence has corrupted the examination process, compromised the integrity of secondary school certification, and entrenched a culture of dishonesty among young learners. But to treat this as a technical problem solvable by bureaucratic fiat is to fundamentally misunderstand the scope and depth of the rot.

At the heart of the miracle centre phenomenon is a triad of complicity – proprietors, parents, and, indirectly, a permissive society. These actors have normalised a culture where examination success can be bought, supervised by corrupt invigilators, and certified by compromised systems. The tragedy is that everyone pretends this is education.

Let’s pause and interrogate the moral bankruptcy in the business of certification. Begin with the proprietors, those who run these so-called learning centres. These individuals (though not all) often parade themselves as educators, claiming to offer academic salvation for struggling students. But they are, in effect, merchants of deceit. They operate schools where teaching is secondary to scheming, where classrooms serve as rehearsal halls for examination fraud, and where school fees are really down-payments for guaranteed success.

The moral collapse here is staggering. Some of those proprietors are not just aiding malpractice; they are institutionalising it. They are training students to bypass effort, normalising dishonesty, and profiting from the erosion of merit. In doing so, they are not merely helping students cheat; they are cheating the students of the very tools they need to function in society, that is, discipline, rigor, and resilience.

What is more tragic is the professional camouflage many of these centres adopt. They obtain official registration numbers. They wear school uniforms. They engage in mock examinations. Yet, beneath the surface lies a well-oiled operation designed not to educate, but to ensure certification, at any cost. The end product is a certificate without substance, and a graduate without grounding.

Yet, this class of proprietors does not operate in isolation. They are patronised, often enthusiastically, by parents who should be the first line of resistance against fraud. Many of such failed parents begin their children’s education in reputable schools that enforce discipline and uphold academic integrity. But as final examinations approach, particularly the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE), they withdraw their children and send them to miracle centres. Why? Because they fear failure; because they want to “secure good grades;” because they do not trust the system to reward merit. In short, they rationalise wrongdoing in the name of parental duty.

As I was doing this piece, Vanguard newspaper broke the news: “WAEC: Parent hires thugs to assault vice principal for preventing cheating”. According to the news story, “suspected thugs hired by a parent of a student of Complete Child Development College, Aule, Akure, in Ondo State, reportedly beat up the Vice Principal of the school for preventing his son from cheating in the ongoing West African Examination Council, WAEC exams.”

One then begins to wonder. What kind of parenting model is this? Is it one that would embolden a mother and infuse her with a vodka-kind of audacity and unbridled temerity to invade a school and fight the entire school management over the seizure of an android phone found with her child, an SS 3 student taking WASC exam? Is it one that prioritises appearances over values; one that teaches children that outcomes matter more than principles?

Well, permit me a moment to play the devil’s advocate. These parents are not naive. They must have fulfilled all righteousness. They’re not unmindful of the term, ‘Terms & Conditions Apply’ as the ground rule of all contractual engagements. They pay inflated fees. They fund a shadow economy of levies and bribes – “special centres” fees, logistics charges, and invigilation “appreciation.” They know exactly what they are doing. And worse, they teach their children to believe that this is normal, even smart. Perhaps, that was why the proprietor of the school ordered that the seized phone be returned to the rampaging mother when she besieged the school, according to the report. That also explains why the SS 3 student’s elder brother had the courage to invade the school to harass the Vice Principal, Mr. Rotifa and threatened to deal with him, a threat he later carried out when he in company of his gang, waylaid a Police van, brought out Mr. Rotifa and pummeled him. The tail part of Dayo Johnson’s report indicated that Mr. Rotifa had been discharged from the hospital but didn’t ‘go back to his house for fear of the boys coming back for him’.

This is not merely poor judgment on the part of the parents; it is moral sabotage. It sets up the child for a lifetime of entitlement, ill-preparedness, and disillusionment. It undermines the value of hard work and renders genuine effort a fool’s errand. These are the same parents, who will later decry unemployment and underperformance, forgetting that they helped bake the very dysfunctions they now lament.

What a sad narrative! Thus, in a way, a mother in brazen connivance with her child has become a great enabler of a depraved systemic mess. Together, mother and child have become co-authors of a dangerous script, one in which integrity is optional, and success must be secured at all costs! And we all stand, hands crossed, watching and mopping at the blank space as the theatre of the absurd keeps unfolding.

Surrounding and oxygenating this axix of corruption is a permissive societal environment that has learned to look the other way. Communities know the miracle centres. Some even celebrate them when their students “pass with flying colours.” Religious institutions, supposed custodians of moral standards, often remain silent, except some few vocal ones, who leverage pulpit immunity to condemn the evil. Government agencies, when not complicit, are less than proactive in combating the menace. The entire system has become so tolerant of malpractice that it now takes a moral stand to insist on doing the right thing.

In this ecosystem of organised malfeasance, those who resist the trend, schools that insist on academic honesty, teachers who refuse to compromise, parents who demand authentic learning, are seen not as exemplary, but as unrealistic, who ‘no sabi road’. They are mocked for their naivety, sidelined by market forces, and punished by poor examination outcomes in a system rigged against merit. The long-term consequences are as devastating as they are predictable. A generation that cheats its way through secondary school is unlikely to value truth in university, in the workplace, or in public service. A generation taught to bypass hard work will be more vulnerable to corruption, more prone to incompetence, and less resilient in the face of adversity.

We are not merely witnessing examination malpractice. We are witnessing the institutional grooming of citizens who are unprepared for the demands of a modern economy, yet overconfident in their unearned credentials. It is a form of social and economic self-sabotage.

In the light of the foregoing, what is the way forward? The government’s clampdown directive is a necessary start, but it is not sufficient. Enforcement must be rigorous, transparent, and sustained. Later report suggests that the police have arrested Mr. Rotifa’s tormentors. That is quite commendable but whether the case will see diligent arraignment, prosecution, and logical conclusion remains to be seen. Also, rogue centres must be identified, blacklisted, and shut down. Examination officials found to be complicit must face disciplinary and legal consequences. The integrity of certification must be restored.

But the harder task lies beyond enforcement. It lies in cultural transformation. We must rebuild the social consensus around academic integrity. Schools that uphold standards must be publicly recognised and supported. Parents must be reoriented through community outreach, media advocacy, and religious engagement. Children must be taught from early stages that education is a process, not a transaction. Moreover, examination bodies must embrace technological tools to reduce human interference in the conduct and marking of exams. Computer-based testing, biometric registration, and real-time surveillance must become the norm, not the exception.

To conclude, the miracle centre is not a miracle. It is a symptom of desperation, dysfunction, and decay. Its persistence reflects a collective failure of conscience, from proprietors and parents to regulators and communities. If we are to reverse the tide, we must do more than issue directives. We must summon a national ethical courage that prioritises truth over convenience, learning over certification, and integrity over short-term gains. Until we do, our children will continue to inherit not just our certificates, but our compromises and consequences of manufactured merit. And that, truly, is the greatest tragedy of all. Herein lies the ‘dividends’ ‘Miracle Centres’ illusion of merit.

.Prof Agbedo is of the University of Nigeria Nsukka, a Fellow of Royal Dutch Institute, and Public Affairs Analyst