CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1       Background of the Study
Criminal behaviour amongst undergraduates has been a major issue in the school system in Nigerian universities. Literally, Paranjape (2011) defined criminal behaviour as a person’s actions or inaction which tends to undermine the grand norms governing a given society such action may be tantamount to violation of the social contract and mutual consensus entered into by members of the society. Behaviour that does not conform to the cultural norms or laws of a given society at a particular time and is often times negatively sanctioned, is referred to as criminal. This implies that non-conformity to a given set of laws or norms that are accepted by a significant number of people in a community, society or group is a criminal act. Society highly values conformity to socially accepted behaviour and expects it to be accepted and upheld by its members.
Criminal behaviour takes various forms. Bribery and corruption is one of the criminal behaviours exhibited amongst some students and lecturers in higher institutions. This menace is eating up the growth of Nigeria, because, undergraduates who had indulged in corrupt practices when in school will also do the same when given an opportunity to lead in the society. With the high rate of corruption in Nigeria, it can be said that, most of these corrupt leaders might have involved themselves in one criminal act or the other when they were in school
Hallack and Passion (2007) in their work pointed out that, corruption constitutes a serious threat to the successful achievement of educational goals. There are various degrees of corrupt practices.
Nta (2012) reported that, from petitions of students, members of the university staff, unions and others stakeholders, corrupt practices in the university system includes; admissions racketing, examination misconduct, falsification of academic records such as transcripts and a few to mention. Igbinovia (2003) observed that, there is hardly any Nigerian living today that can claim that he or she has not advertently or inadvertently, by commission or omission been involved in crimes or benefitted directly or indirectly from criminality or deviance or the commission of crimes or the proceeds of criminality. The various forms of criminal behaviour will be streamlined to three aspects which are; examination misconduct, sexual harassment and vices.
Examination misconduct as a criminal behaviour is mostly practiced by undergraduates. It refers to cheating in examination conditions to get unearned marks with the aim of passing an examination. Some of the ways or methods of exams misconduct includes; the use of bullets (small papers with answers on), impersonating, sorting, leakage of examination questions, swapping of exams sheets and to name a few. Some factors which enhance students are the relationship they have amongst some lecturers known as the connivance between some students and some lecturers, poor supervision and invigilation, overcrowding, low morale amongst lecturers and laziness on the part of the students, un-conducive study environments and the prevailing morale decadence in Nigeria. Pratt (1981) stated that, students are likely to cheat when they are not prepared for examinations. Examination malpractice has become an epidemic in the Nigerian university system. It is so embarrassing that the federal military government in 1984 promulgated a decree (Decree 20) to deal with exams malpractice; Part of it reads; any person who fraudulently or with intent to cheat or secure any unfair advantage to himself or any other person, or in abuse of his office, produces or sells any question paper intended for examination of persons, at any examination specified in section 3 (27) (c) of this decree, shall be guilty of an offence and on conviction be sentenced to 21 years imprisonment (Fagbemi, 1998, p.17). Despite these laws, examination misconduct has been on the increase and this is due to the non-implementation of the laws, reasons for it being, the low moral standards in most universities, students fear of failure, inadequate preparedness and 419 syndromes that have eroded deeply into the life of the society. Fayombo (2004) outlined the reasons for examination malpractice into psychological and sociological factors. Due to the overdependence of certification in Nigeria, it has led the populace to acquire certificates either legally or illegally. This has had a negative impact on the quality of education to the extent that a lot of graduates cannot defend their Degrees.