Adoption of African Traditional Religious Practices in combating Corruption in Nigerian Education System

Abstract

The paper examined the Adoption of African Religious Traditional Practices in Combating Corruption in Nigerian Education System. Education is the bedrock of development. Through education, future thinkers and Leaders are produced. But, it is regrettable that education system has deteriorated to the extent that instead of being an agent of transformation, empowerment and an instrument of purifying the minds of the young ones to become useful members of the society, has today become an agent of imparting corruption in the minds of the young ones. This aberration in the goal and aim of education is caused by endemic and legendary corruption in Education in Nigeria. Corruption in Nigerian education system manifests itself in all levels of education (primary, secondary and tertiary institutions). There exist different forms of corruption existing in our institution for example, examination malpractice, financial scams, embezzlement, exploitation of students, taking advantage students, etc. The existence of different forms of corruption in our institution has led to dearth and decay of infrastructure in the schools. Corruption has enormity of negative effects on the output from the system (graduates) in the area of productivity and their degree of acceptance in the labour market. Many methods have been adopted to stop this malaise, but they proved inadequate. Based on this, this research suggests the adoption of African Traditional religious methods in curbing the evil effects of corruption in Nigerian education system. Some of the suggested practices are: Putting the school property, money, etc in the custodian of a powerful deity, workers and students in education sector swearing oath in the shrine of a powerful and dreadful deity that they will not be involved in any form of malpractice. These and other methods suggested are hoped to be final panacea to combat corruption in education in Nigeria.

Keywords: Corruption, Education, African Traditional Religious Practice (ATR), West African Examination Council (WAEC), National Examination Council (NECO)