Use Of English 2004 Jamb Examination

The passage below has gaps numbered 6 to 15.

Capitalism is an economic system which is founded on the principle of free enterprise and the private ownership of the
means of production and distribution. The __6__ of capitalism claim that its essential characteristic is economic __7__ The producer is free to produce whatever goods he __8__ but the __9__ is equally free to buy what he wants. There is a market mechanism under this system which belongs to the producer and consumer together and tends to equate the supplies of the one to the demands of the other, and __10__ the whims and caprice of both. It is this same …11… mechanism which determines what prices the consumers pay to the producers, as well as what share the total …12…, in cash or kind, goes to each of the four recognized …13… of production-land, labour, capital and organization. It is further claimed for this system that every person is capable of watching his or her own interest, and that whatever injustice is done by the …14… of the market mechanism, this mechanism tends to bring about a state of …15… between the producers and the consumers.

We knew early in our life that the atmosphere in our home was different from that in many other homes, where husbands and wives quarrel and where there was drunkenness, laziness or indifference – things we never saw in our family. We chafed and grumbled at the strictness of my father’s regime. We went to hide whenever we broke the rules too visibly. We knew,nevertheless, that our parents wanted good things for us. Some of these, such as the insistence on our going to school and never missing a day, we accepted readily enough, although, like most other children, we occasionally yielded to the temptation to play truant. However, in other cases such as their effort to keep us out of contact with the difficult life – the drinking and fighting and beer-brewing and gambling – their failure was inevitable. They could not keep us insulated. By the time we moved about, we were already seeing things with their eyes and judging things by the standards we had absorbed from them

It was borne in on me and my brother at a very early age that our father was an uncommon man. For one thing, in most African families, work around the home was women's work. So we were vastly impressed by the fact that whenever my mother was away, my father could and did do all her jobs – cooking, cleaning and looking after us. We lived in this way in a community in which housework was reg as being beneath male dignity. Even in families which, like ours, produced boy after boy – our sister came fifth – it simply meant that the mother carried a greater and greater burden of work. In our family, nevertheless, the boys did girl’s work, and my father did it with us.

One of the prime chores of life in the family was fetching water from the pump down the street, some two hundred meters from our door. Since the pump was not unlocked until six in the morning and there was always crowding, a system had developed whereby you got out before dawn, placed your twenty-liter tinin line, and then went home, returning later to take your place. Often, of course, tins would be moved back in line and others moved ahead. This could be corrected if none of those in front were too big a challenge.

When taps were substituted for the pumps, the first one installed was nearly a kilometer away from our house and we had to make the treck with the water tins balanced on our heads-- and indignity because this was the way girls, not proud males, carried their burdens. All the children in the neighbourhood knew we did women’s work and I can still hear their derisive laughter. We did our jobs doggedly, that notwithstanding,
because our father and mother expected it of us. Out of choice our father did everything we did, including fetching water on the occasion, and commanded us by sheer force of his example.

A Wolf, seeing a Lamb drinking from a river, wanted to find a pretext for devouring him. He stood higher up the stream and accused the lamb of muddying the water so that he could not drink. The lamb said that he drank only with tip of his tongue and that in any case he was standing lower down the river, and could not possibly disturb the water higher up. When this excuse failed him, the wolf said: ‘Well, last year you insulted my father.’‘I wasn’t even born then,’ replied the lamb.

‘You are good at finding answers,' said the wolf, ‘but what do you mean by taking up so much of the path where I am walking? The lamb, frightened at the wolf’s angry tone and terrible aspect, told him, with all due submission, that he could not conceive how his walking on such a wide path could occasion him inconvenience. ‘What!’ exclaimed the wolf, seemingly in great anger and indignation. ‘You are as impudent as your father, who seized me by the throat last year, and caused me to be kept in a cage for three months.’

‘If you will believe me,’ said the lamb, ‘my parents are poor simple creatures who live entirely by green stuff; we are none of us hunters of your species.’‘Ah! I see it’s no use talking to you, ‘said the wolf, drawing up close to him. ‘It runs in the blood of your family to hate us wolves, and therefore, as we have come so conveniently together, I’ll just pay off a few of your forefathers’ scores before we part. ‘So saying, he leaped at the lamb from behind and garroted him.