Will the corrupt educational qualifications bring changes to South Sudan?
4 min readBy Deng Akok Muoradid, Juba, South Sudan
March 3, 2018 (SSB) — South Sudan is a hopeless country where the corruption exists in all the sectors. The only worse thing is that the corruption is being practiced at the educational sector, the only sector that is expected to bring changes. The citizens are no longer expecting any elimination of corruption since it exists in the educational sectors. The corruption is being practiced in many different ways and the visible form of it at the education sector is the award of scholarship to the relatives, sons and daughters of the senior public officials or the officials in charge of the scholarship schemes.
It has been happening many times in which the selection of the candidates to the various scholarship is based on the recommendation from the senior officials rather than the merit or the academic documents. The consequence of awarding scholarship to the relatives has already been felt since it has spoiled the name of our country. For example some dull students who were sent to Egypt and South Africa for scholarships were later sent back to South Sudan due to their failure to perform well as expected by the host countries.
The failure of the weak recommended students to perform well, forced the host countries to cancel the scholarship and they blamed South Sudan for producing dull students without knowing that there are capable and qualified South Sudanese who are denied scholarship because they are not relatives to the senior officials in charge. The writer of this article is one of the victims of the corruption practices in the scholarship. For example he was treated like a foreigner during one of the scholarship schemes because he has no relative who is working at the ministry of education. Another form of corruption at the educational sector is the selling of academic documents which is now becoming rampant and uncontrollable. Many of the self proclaimed graduates are holding fake degrees which they bought from many unrecognized universities within or outside the country. There are many unrecognized and unregistered private universities that are illegally operating in South Sudan and they are awarding fakes academic documents to the citizens in the presence of the ministry of education.
Most of the illiterate public officials usually buy academic documents for the purpose of maintaining their positions or for the sake of promotion to the high positions. Even our citizens have reached the level of buying medical certificates. Do such illiterate people have capability and ability to administer treatment? One does not join school to attain certificate but to acquire knowledge. Whoever holds a certificate without knowledge always initiate destructive project whenever he/she is given a position because he or she lacks knowledge to apply in that particular field. That is the reason why some self proclaimed individuals are the one inciting violence rather than promoting peace. Holding a certificate without knowledge is more disastrous than the primitiveness.
Educational sector in any country is the only sector that brings changes through development and eradication of corruption. However in South Sudan, it has been turned in to a centre for corruption which is in contrary to its stipulated objectives. The citizens of South Sudan were expecting that the problem of corruption and illiteracy would be eliminated by educating the young and future generations.
Who will educate these future generations about the negative impacts of corruption when the education sector itself is the root of corruption in South Sudan? In addition to that, basing recruitment on the recommendation, loyalty or being a relative to a senior official is one of the key factors that have contributed to the current crisis. It has never happened in any supreme nation for a pure illiterate human being to be employed as a medical doctor or a cashier. Does such a person have knowledge in medical or financial field? We the students who are currently studying in universities know very well that we will end up in cattle camps because the system of recruitment is not fair since it is based on loyalty or being a relative to a senior official rather than the merit.
The author is a university student and he can be reached for commentary via mob: +211954764508 or email: dengakokmuoradid@gmail.com
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