#NairaLife: He Once Lived on Exam Fraud. Now, He’s Trying to Clean Up His Act With Stocks

Every week, Naijaonpoint seeks to understand how people move the Naira in and out of their lives. Some stories will be struggle-ish, others will be bougie. All the time, it’ll be revealing.

At the beginning of the term, my primary school would give us a long list of textbooks. The parents handled the book purchases, but my parents handed the responsibility to me when I was in primary two.

They’d give me money for the entire list so I could sort myself out. Not all the books were compulsory, and I got to choose which one I wanted to buy each time. My parents didn’t really care what I did. They believed I could handle it myself.

I mostly used it for the books. But since I didn’t buy all the books at once, I’d hold on to the money to see if the teachers would actually demand some books. If by the mid-term, the teachers hadn’t checked, that book money automatically became mine. But if they asked, I’d quickly bring out the saved cash and buy it.

I understood the power and value of money because of this book thing. I saw how teachers routinely chased students out of the classroom because their parents couldn’t afford the books. I was never chased out.

Looking back now with adult lenses, I realise we weren’t rich, but my parents were incredibly hard workers. 

My mother was a trader, and my dad worked at the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC). People will hear NNPC and assume we were swimming in oil money, but he wasn’t a high-ranking staff. He was more like a third-party consultant. Still, our family didn’t lack the basics. Our rent was never late, and I was never sent home from school. We didn’t own cars, but we were okay.

Right after my JSS 3 exams in 2013 or 2014. I got a job at a local bakery. The pay was ₦500 per day.

My parents only provided the basics, such as food. Nobody was going to give me flexing money. Some of my peers went into block moulding, but I chose the bakery.

At the bakery, I wrapped bread, washed baking pans, and carried heavy logs of wood to the ovens. I didn’t work every day; the bakery didn’t open on Wednesdays and Sundays, and as a casual worker, I could show up to learn that there was no space for the day. So, I worked on and off for two months before resuming senior secondary school.

Honestly, a big chunk of the money went right back into treating my body. I always returned home from work with body pains from the heavy lifting. 

I couldn’t even complain to my mum or anyone because they’d remind me that it was my decision to work there. So, I used my earnings to buy medications to patch myself up. The rest went to buying evening suya. Nothing meaningful came out of it.

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Yes. In SS 2, I joined a voluntary youth organisation in church called the Royal Ambassadors of Nigeria. To fully participate, I needed to buy the uniform and pay for a ranking exercise. The uniform and sewing cost ₦9,000, and the exercise was ₦1,500, totalling ₦10,500.

When I asked my mum for the money, she said, “That thing is not your school, so I’m not paying for it.” I had to raise the money myself.

I  hawked pure water after school hours and on Saturdays. I made about ₦700 – ₦800 in daily profit. 

Every Saturday afternoon, after selling water, I’d head straight to our weekly Ambassadors meeting. Then I’d hand over my daily profit to the unit president, who kept my payment record. I did this for about five months until the ₦10,500 was fully paid up, and I got ranked. Today, I use that experience to mentor younger boys whose parents refuse to support their extracurricular goals.

The next time the “spirit of hustle” returned was when I was in SS 3. I was supposed to be preparing for WAEC or NECO, but based on my calculations, I predicted that year’s WAEC results might be bad.

I noticed that if the WAEC results for a year were good, the following year’s would be bad. It looked like that year’s WAEC might be bad, so to avoid wasting money, I suggested to my parents that they either pay for just NECO or for both exams.

NECO was more expensive than WAEC, which was only ₦7k in 2017. My parents were like, “We don’t have more than ₦7k. It’s either you register for WAEC or go and look for the NECO balance.”

Other people would have gotten frustrated. Me, I just smiled. I stopped going to school regularly to read my books at home instead. I used the free time to look for a job.

A job packaging nylon sheets at a cellophane factory for ₦12k/month. I worked there for a few months to cover part of the NECO registration fee, which ended up costing over ₦60k in total, including school logistics.

When I needed more money to cover the costs, someone connected me with an aluminium and glass company. The salary there was ₦15k/month. But there was a catch; the owner asked if I was still a student. Everyone assumed I had graduated, and if I told her the truth, she wouldn’t hire me because the workload required full-time commitment. I lied and said I was done with school, even though I still had NECO exams to write.

It was chaotic. On exam days, I’d pretend I was terribly sick and rush out of work. Balancing it was so hard that I actually missed my economics paper completely and got an ‘absent’ in my results. I still passed the general requirements sha.

The work itself was stressful. I cut the aluminium, managed banking deposits because they trusted me, and travelled alone to Warri and Onitsha to source materials. My salary eventually increased to ₦20k, but transportation costs ate up most of it. To save money, I would trek for hours every single morning from my house to the workshop. I worked there from June until September 2018, when I moved to Warri, which wasn’t far from home.

I hoped to secure a job with my O-Level results and start my life. I squatted with friends and relatives in Warri, since I couldn’t afford accommodation.

Thankfully, soon after I arrived, I found an open security guard position at a private school. The ₦18k/month salary was small, but I took it because it was a Monday-to-Friday gig, which meant my Saturdays were free for my Royal Ambassadors meetings.

A few weeks into the job, the school’s owner noticed my competence and computer literacy. She pulled me away from the gate and put me in her office as the school secretary. I stopped wearing the security uniform, even though I was still doing both jobs — I monitored the school gate from the office window.

No. She pleaded that the school was small and couldn’t afford an increase. I accepted because I was running an event-planning hustle on weekends. I was highly active in the entertainment scene in Warri and other neighbouring towns. I did everything from promoting clubs and handling stage management to working as a DJ assistant and selling tickets for music concerts and festivals.

I was incredibly good at convincing people. I could talk a group looking for a table of four into upgrading to a table of six on the spot. My pay wasn’t stable since my work depended on what service was needed, but a typical event weekend brought me between ₦5k and ₦10k.

About three years. I was there from September 2018 until 2021. By January 2019, the school’s student population had dropped drastically, and the owner called a meeting to lay off staff. Some of us agreed to take a pay cut instead of losing our jobs, so my salary dropped to ₦15k.

During school holidays, when there was no work to do, the owner would arrange for me to work at her husband’s hotel so I could earn something. It wasn’t until after the COVID-19 lockdown that she returned my salary to ₦18k. 

By 2021, I looked around and realised all my friends were already in higher institutions. Even though I was making money from events, I told myself, “If I don’t go to school now, I will lose interest forever.” So, I resigned and got admission to a polytechnic in a different town.

I’m not proud of this part of my story.

When I first arrived at school, my accommodation plans fell through, and the place I ended up staying was so far that my daily commute cost could pay a student’s monthly rent in town. 

Also, I was too far from Warri to continue my event planning side hustle, and I knew my savings would run out quickly. Out of desperation, I approached two lecturers to offer my services as an office assistant in exchange for small money, but they both rejected me. I was heartbroken, but I couldn’t wallow in it for too long. Instantly, I started looking for other options.

I noticed that some students were either too lazy or busy to complete assignments or school registrations, so I seized the opportunity to do them for a little change here and there. One day, while helping someone process their documents in an administrative office, I met a guy who had been hearing about my academic performance. He tested my intelligence right there, saw what I was capable of, and introduced me to exam impersonation.

Yes. It started small with continuous assessment tests. He’d pay me between ₦2k and ₦4k per test. Then the main semester exams arrived, and the first one was a computer-based exam. The guy who brought me in didn’t trust me with a major exam, but his main guy, who was supposed to write the exam on behalf of others, disappointed him on the morning of a 7 a.m. paper.

So he gave me the login details for three students. I walked into the hall, logged into the first portal and completed the exam. Then I logged into the second, cleared it, and did the third. Nobody suspected a thing because I have a very calm, gentle face. When I walked out, ₦100k was credited to my account instantly.

That single morning changed everything. From that moment on, a large portion of my polytechnic tuition and rent was paid entirely with money from impersonation. I’m not proud of it, but the money kept me going. Every semester, I was guaranteed at least ₦200k from exam runs. 

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