However, people’s beliefs about social expectations in their community and their own personal expectations of how other community members should behave did not match. As Figure 4 shows, in most communities, respondents thought a high number of people supported and approved of the practice of pass-mark bribery, even though most respondents in the same communities personally disapproved of the practice. In Adamawa and Enugu, for example, residents thought that 4 out of 10 (or 40 per cent) of parents paid a pass-mark bribe to the teacher and also thought that 4 out of 10 (or 40 per cent) of community members approved of this practice, but when asked about what they personally thought, only 8.6 per cent and 11 per cent of respondents, respectively, actually thought that parents should pay the teacher (see also Figure 1).
This mistaken belief about the views of others in the community is called pluralistic ignorance. It can lead members of a community to think a practice is more acceptable – because it appears common – than it really is, even though most members of the community disapprove of the practice and would prefer it to stop. Sokoto notably ranked the lowest in terms of empirical expectations, with respondents believing that only 1 out of 10 (or 10 per cent) of parents paid bribes in exchange for pass marks, even though respondents in Sokoto state also had the lowest negative personal normative beliefs about the practice – less than 71 per cent believed conclusively that it was unacceptable to pay bribes.
Legal knowledge surrounding pass-mark bribery
Just under 84 per cent of people interviewed for this survey believed that it was illegal to pay a teacher for ensuring a pass mark for a child in a national examination. Across states, the percentage of respondents who either did not know that pass-mark bribery is illegal under the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Offences Act of 2000, or who thought that it was legal, varied between as little as 8.9 per cent in Rivers, and as much as 37.4 per cent, or more than one-third, in Sokoto.
In fact, Sokoto provides a striking example of the ambiguity surrounding examination processes and payments. It is very likely that a lack of transparency and irregularity of examination procedures – as well as the multiple, overlapping and unreceipted payments demanded of parents by schools and examination boards – is driving confusion surrounding legal rules.
Question: Do you think that it is illegal for parents to pay for their children to receive a pass in a national exam?
