Lagos – The Association for Formidable Education Development (AFED) has condemned the allegation that some officials of the Lagos State Government extorted private school proprietors attempting to pay for placement examination.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Placement Examination is the test written by pupils in Basic Six to gain admission into public secondary schools.
The president of AFED, Mrs Ifejola Dada, told NAN in Lagos that the officials used the examination to extort the private school owners without remitting the money to the government’s coffers.
Dada said that no fewer than 4,000 schools under the umbrella of the association were affected.
“The officials will then register the schools they collected money from illegally because we are paying to the government.
“Thank God the Director, Lagos State Examination Board, Mr Tolulope Hassan, was able to capture AFED legally-registered schools for the examination.
“For instance, there were no AFED schools that registered for the examination in Maryland and on the Lagos Island, but we heard that there were registrations from these local government areas.
“We have it on good authority that no fewer than 3,000 pupils wrote the exams from the two local government areas,’’ she said.
“So, these officials were using AFED to collect money without remitting to the government.
“This has been the practice in the past and with the help of the director, we will be able to fish out the people that are bringing this problem.
“These are also the people helping these children to write this examination because they did not prepare for it themselves,’’ she said.
Dada also commended the improvement in the standard and method of the placement examination.
She said that the government was changing its method of examination so that people would not get used to a particular method.
[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]
But the Director of Examination Board, Mr Tolulope Hassan, dismissed the allegation by the officials of AFED.
According to Hassan, there is no way a school will be registered to write the examination without paying to government coffers.
He said that on payment, a compact disc (CD) is given to each school.
“Nothing like that happened; if you don’t pay, you can’t be registered. There is no way one can register without having a customised CD.
“It is in the CD that application is made for registration, so, such an allegation is fallacious,’’ he said. (NAN)