Some students of the Osun State office of the National Teachers Institute (NTI), headquartered in Kaduna State, have accused the management of corruption and mismanagement of their results.

The Osun State chapter of the institution operates about 12 study centres in different local government areas of the state. Of these NTI centres, one is located in the Iwo Local Government Area. The institute is a federal institution with a mandate to train Nigerian teachers and students.

Over the years, the institute’s study centre in Iwo has been mismanaging the results of students and recording absences for some of them in examinations they wrote and completed necessary documentation for.

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No fewer than five students from the school narrated their experiences to this medium. FIJ’s interviews revealed that the centre has stopped some students from fulfilling their aspirations in record time.

FIJ understands that the NTI runs multi-layered academic programmes, including post-graduate degree in education (PGDE) courses. Our sources, who enrolled in one-year post-graduate degree programmes to obtain PGDE certifications, explained they had been made to retake the same examinations multiple times. Despite this, the management insists that records show they were absent on examination days.

IN ONE CASE

Alli, a former student, chose to be identified by his first name. After completing a master’s degree programme at the University of Ibadan, he enrolled in a one-year PGDE course at the centre in 2021, a prerequisite certification for potential specialists in education to enable them to acquire necessary pedagogical skills.

The student was expected to graduate in 2022. Without having any outstanding fees to pay in the second semester, he wrote all his examinations and was expecting to see all his results.

“I did my PGDE at the National Teachers Institute (NTI), Iwo study centre, in 2021. I was supposed to have my results and certificate in 2022,” Alli told FIJ.

When the results were released in 2022, Alli went to check his performance only to be told by Olaniregun Funmi, the centre manager, that he did not have any record of participation in one of the courses.

“Unfortunately, when I got there, I was told that I was absent in one of the courses. I was like, ‘How would I be recorded as absent in an exam I sat for and wrote the attendance?’ I was morally persuaded by the centre manager to register for the course again. I listened to her and sat for the exam again,” he said.

FIJ learned that Alli paid another examination fee and rewrote the examination. To his chagrin in 2023, he found again that he was also recorded to have been absent in the same examination.

“In 2023, I went there again to check, but I was told that I was still recorded as absent from the exam. The discovery angered me, knowing that I wrote the exams and documented my attendance like others.”

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This time around, Alli called for his examination scripts, but rather than accede to the request, Funmi has been appealing to him to re-register for the course, which would make it the student’s third time of sitting for one exam.

Some of the friends with whom Alli wrote the same examination the first time attested to his presence on all the examination days.

FIJ’s findings showed that Alli is only one of the multitude of students NTI has forced to rewrite the same exams many times on account of “human errors”.

A LAWYER’S PHONE CALL HELPED SOME OUT

Many other post-graduate students have gone through Alli’s experience. But for the other students this newspaper interviewed, it took only a legal practitioner’s involvement to get their issues resolved.

Awolumote Rasheed (not real name), a former student, explained that he was told in 2022 that he failed three courses. Helpless, he registered for the courses again. But in 2023, the centre dampened his spirits when the management told him he had failed one of the courses again.

He met with Olorunwa Akeem (not real name), who was in the same situation, and they facilitated a trip to the state office located inside Government Technical College, Osogbo. The duo called for their exam scripts at the state office. However, the management declined to entertain their request. Instead, they were told to go and pay again and re-sit the examination.

Having lost their patience, and in view of the attendant financial cost and waste of precious time, they consulted a lawyer. Upon a phone call by the lawyer, the management informed the students the following day that their results had been found.

“I don’t know the name of the official who attended to us. But before we met her, we had met with the state coordinator, who told us to wait for the custodian of exam results. Although the way the custodian attended to us was not dignifying, we did not mind because we knew what we were there for was more important,” Rasheed said.

“They said the result sheet showed I failed one course and my friend failed all three courses he retook. Even after we showed our unhappiness, the officials did not care; they dared us to do whatever we desired to do if we couldn’t go and register for the courses again. We knew we could not have failed because each of us knew how well we prepared for the exams.

“My friend contacted his lawyer. When the lawyer phoned them, they said they would check again and know what to do about it, urging the lawyer to exercise patience. Interestingly, they called my friend the following day and told him he had no carry-over again. They then said he had some money to pay. He later went there to confirm, and it had been updated, showing he had no carry-over.

“The official claimed that she was surprised to have called wrong results to my friend the previous day and that my friend must be having some spiritual problems affecting his success. This is a very ridiculous claim. I also went there some days later and found that the carry-over they purportedly assigned to my name had been cleared. I don’t know if they are doing that to frustrate students and extort money from them.”

CENTRE MANAGER COLLECTS SCHOOLS FEES FROM STUDENTS INTO HER PERSONAL ACCOUNT

Our sources further stated that they were not allowed to pay their school fees and examination charges as directed by the NTI. The centre manager would ask them to either pay in cash or transfer the money into her bank account.

“The school is completely disorganised and frustrating. Bribery and extortion reign. The different units of the institute appear not to be working in harmony. For instance, our results took a long time to be released. We had finished our studies before our first semester results were released. On top of that, results announced at the centre could be different from what the state would announce.

“The centre managers are not straightforward. Instead of allowing us to pay into the NTI’s official account, they collect our school fees in cash or ask us to pay into their personal accounts and treat us like secondary school students.”

The culture of collecting academic fees from students in cash or via bank transfers into centre managers’ personal accounts is not limited to the Iwo study centre, FIJ has learned.

“We are learned people. Their organisation is poor and skewed to enable corruption and extortion. Although I know that they normally remit the money to the institute, they probably have something they are deriving personally. It is very ridiculous,” Rasheed said.

“In 2023, we learnt that a cyber cafe operator in Osogbo had been producing fake Remita certificates for payments done by centre managers on behalf of their students. It was a very big scandal. If these managers were not getting some cuts from the cafe operator, how would all of them be patronising a single person for a service that can be accessed anywhere, even on internet-enabled phones?”

FIJ further learned that some students were compelled to pay double school fees in 2023 following a discovery that their Remita payment certificates were forged.

‘I KNOW THEY ARE NOT AT FAULT’

In her response, Olaniregun said that the affected students had a valid reason to be aggrieved, confirming that Remita certificates were indeed forged by a payment agent in Osogbo, which jeopardised the studies of many students.

“I have explained to all those students that are affected. There are errors everywhere. I have given them solutions, but they have refused. They said they would go as far as Kaduna (headquarters) to report their case,” the centre manager said on Monday over the phone.

“I know that they are not at fault, and I have tried my best in order to erase all those things. I have told them to let us sit on a roundtable and discuss it. If they pay and retake their exams, I will follow it up so that they can pass without any problem again.

“A lot of factors might cause someone’s script to get lost. Things like this also happen in regular institutions. There are errors, but it is like one percent out of 100 percent. It might be a human error. They also have to be praying. Some of them will pay their school fees and not show evidence of payment on time.

She confirmed that she used to collect school fees through her personal account. “I used to do that because some of them are not computer literate. I was doing that to make sure they did not pay into the wrong account. But I no longer do that. I have stopped since 2022,” she said.

Contrary to her claim, FIJ has evidence that she collected some money through her First Bank account as recently as September 2023. When asked about this, she insisted that she had stopped doing that.

REMITA CERTIFICATE FORGERY

The centre manager absolved herself of the forgery of Remita payment certificates in the possession of some students. She explained that it was a statewide episode and all the centre managers had to collectively deal with it.

An investigation showed that all the fake payment certificates represented about N25 million, according to Funmi. “The man that I was forwarding the students’ money to in Osogbo to pay it through the institute’s portal manufactured fake certificates in some instances, and we did not know. This affected all our centres in the state,” she said.

“The national leadership of the institute discovered a drop in revenue from Osun State, and they had to come and investigate the issues. They brought a fake document detection device and discovered that many of the certificates were fake.”

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Who bore the consequences? FIJ asked Funmi. In response, she said, “I was not the only centre manager affected. Like I said, it was a statewide issue. We appealed to the students, and some of them have repaid their fees. Some have not repaid. Mind you, I am innocent of this.

“We have reported the man to the ICPC and recovered some money from him. I have suffered for that. I have learnt my lesson, and I am not doing that again.”

She said Mumini Adeleye, the state coordinator, was aware of the payment scandal and that Olasunkanmi Mutiu, the cyber cafe operator alleged to have faked the payment documents, was already being handled by the police.

FIJ could not obtain Adeleye’s phone number for his comment at press time.