Influx of fake Casio calculators, education materials worries stakeholders

The Managing Director, SKLD Integrated Services Limited, Mrs Temilola Adepetun, has expressed concern over the increased number of fake calculators and education products in circulation and called on the government to sanitise the system to discourage the practice.

Adepetun lamented fake calculators being imported into the country. Speaking at a conference to showcase Casio’s efforts in advancing education within Nigeria, Adepetun said the country has turned into a dumping ground for fake products.

She added that in the process, fake Casio calculators are brought in. She wondered what the government agencies and examination bodies are doing to enforce the laws and ensure that students are allowed to use authentic calculators.

“How many parastatals are controlling the quality of things that are brought in or imported into Nigeria? What are the customs doing? In the case of examination bodies, what are they doing? Are they adopting the authentic calculators or allowing the students to use just any calculator?” she asked.

Adepetun expressed concern that the fake calculators actually give wrong answers, adding that it is time the country began to sanitise education materials from the top.

Her words: “There is hardly any science subject one will not need a calculator for. Mathematics, for instance, is a very important subject. If you don’t have a credit in it, you can’t get an admission into the university. It’s time we had started cleaning up from top to bottom. A lot of traders bring in a lot of second hand products. So, the cleanup has to start somewhere.

“There are fake calculators in the market; you have to be a trader of integrity to want to sell the original one. So, we want to reward our dealers so that they can, in turn, spread the word in different markets where stationery materials are sold.

“Our objective is to show the difference between authentic products and fake ones, so that they can go back and educate others in their market or organisation.”

Education Specialist, Casio, Japan, Koichi Danjo, explained that his organisation proposed a new way of studying mathematics with a scientific calculator, which is not so common in Nigeria markets.

Danjo said the company is selecting some schools to inclusively teach maths lessons on trigonometry. According to him, if teachers learn how to utilise scientific calculators in their classrooms, then the quality of education will dramatically change and their results will improve.

He added that last year, his organisation did a pilot project on six schools in Lagos, where they found out that results of students using scientific calculators in the same subject compared to non-users, were dramatically higher.

“So, we had to expand this result to other schools across the country,” he said.