My Funny stories

MY JAMB STORY by Adebayo Caleb (beware, you may just laugh too much)

We didn’t get seated until three hours after the scheduled time. The JAMB exam had finally come.

Some invigilators looked like henchmen and others moved like their feet were as heavy as an anvil. The classroom smelled putrid; it reminded me of the pap I had taken that morning.

The moment the question papers and answer sheets were shared, an elderly female invigilator came into the class. She began ‘Listen to me my children, I am like a mother to you, and so you can always come to me if you need any help for the exam. We are like one family.’

The expression on my face came reflexively; it said ‘Are you serious? One family?’ She must have noticed it because she immediately focused her attention on me and said ‘Do you need any help? I shook my head no, but I guess she didn’t see as some other candidates began to raise up their hands signifying that they needed help.

The moment we were asked to start, various movements started taking place. A girl by my side began fiddling nervously with her hair; it didn’t take long for me to realise that there was a paper in it. Another boy bent his head down and right before my eyes, he withdrew a large fold of paper wrapped in cello tape from inside his mouth, wiped it and began opening it. I supposed it had been wedged somewhere under his tongue. My mouth hung agape in surprise.

Almost immediately, one of the henchmen invigilators came in and asked us to listen to the instruction he had for us. He said it all with a straight face ‘Now let us not deceive ourselves, we all know that there’s nothing we’re doing here. There’s no need for us to waste time here. It is for a reason that this exam is called Joint Matriculation.’ He said, emphasising on the ‘joint’. It means that there are different people that have to put hands together to enable you even smell matriculation. And, the truth is, I am one of them. In fact, I am the most important of them. If you fail here, you will come back next year, and you will buy the JAMB form again and I’m sure you know that it’s not getting any cheaper, so the fact is, let’s not make this hard for ourselves. That is why I and the rest of the invigilators here have provided a working service system where we provide the services and you pay us. And listen to me, this service is compulsory, not obligatory. The woman that introduced herself as your mother is actually the customer care representative of this our small scale enterprise. The only problem is that we are not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, but honestly we are all one big family.’ He said with a selfish chuckle. ‘We are your fathers and mothers and you are our children so there is no reason why you should fail.’

‘Now if you brought any help or machinery with you from outside, we also make provision for that. This is why we have put together a price list, but another problem is that we don’t give receipts, but I don’t see why we need them since we are one big family and we trust ourselves, right?’ he didn’t wait for an answer. Now listen to the Price list: Use of English alone is 500 naira, all four subjects for Arts is 1000, all four subjects for sciences is 1500, all four subjects for social sciences is 1200, machinery is 2000, to make and receive phone call is 2500. If you have your own help or services and you want to use it, that will be 3000 naira. If you feel you want to do it with your head, you will still pay 500 naira. What we don’t want is that after paying a lower service charge, you will begin to use a higher service. That will be an end to your Joint Matriculation, because as I said, I am a major determiner of whether or not you will attend any higher institution. One thing you should be rest assured of is that they can never cancel this centre even if you take your scripts to your house to write because we got it all covered from here. So as our chief accountant will go around please pay immediately so we can get out of here, because I don’t imagine you like the smell of this place any better than I do.’

Just as he finished, the beans and pap I had taken that morning began acting up. My stomach growled and I farted. I said a short prayer that I will make it out of this classroom alive.