Guest Column

NigerianNews

Dr. Yushau Balarabe
Remedial Studies Dept.
University Of Jos
Jos, Nigeria
byushau@gmail.com

I must add here that, the various academic debauchery narrated here should not be equated to lack of talent. We have many potential first class academicians by all standards. However, the system is making it impossible for them to even go close to their potential. Furthermore, despite all this, there are some lecturers albeit small in number, who still have some academic flavor; very decent and do their job effectively. Taking into cognizance of the decadence in the system, this people should serve as a shining example. But to who? The hard work is not appreciated by both the students and school administration. The students are looking at them as unnecessarily making life difficult for them by over working them and by being too strict in their exams. And the school administrations do not seem to have a means of rewarding them. At the same time their colleagues are getting promoted and richer in a Nigerian way!

Epidemic Corruption in our Educational Systems and the Future of Nigeria (III)
by Dr. Yushau Balarabe

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In the last two articles on this issue, I have narrated the rampant examination malpractices at the WAEC/NECO and JAMB. I noted that having the minimum requirement is no longer a guarantee that you are going to be admitted into our universities. Also, not having the minimum requirement does not mean you will not be admitted – if you know your way.

As a result of this carry-over of bad behaviors from secondary schools and admission process, students find it difficult to concentrate and study at the university level. I remember vividly that I was admitted into university through UME with clear weakness in mathematics – the subject I read. This is because; I attended teachers college where Arithmetic is offered in place of mathematics. My first year was terrible. I was in a class with students who did mathematics and additional mathematics. At that time I spent almost all my time either in class or library. It is now a history. I was able to do that perhaps due to the carry-over of reading culture I got from secondary school. However, students these days do not have this reading culture. In place of working hard and spending a lot of time in the library and in group discussion, now students device many different ways to survive in the system. Some of them get involve in cultism, while others use money and some beautiful girls use their body. This is well known practice to the extent that even President Musa Yar'adua was reported to have warned university lecturers to desist from dashing out grades for financial and sexual gains. Also, recently the minister of education Dr. Sam Egwu during his meeting with the committee of vice chancellors lamented the level of the deterioration of our morals and academic values in our university education. He observed that the public perception of our university is no longer a place of education. Rather, it is now a place of cultism, raping, kidnapping etc. He therefore, called on the VCs to work hard toward positive change. Otherwise, they should wait for their dismissal letter. As good as these calls are, they must be followed with action otherwise, they are nothing more than lip service.

To buttress this point, after marking the first semester exams, I had to visit the family of two students who happened to be in my neighborhood. The two brothers got ZERO in my exams. I told the senior brother that if care is not taking, the students will be withdrawn by the end of the session. The first thing that came out from the senior brother is; please do whatever is possible we are just ready for it. Yes, they (students) told me (brother) that we will need to go and see the teachers at the end of the semester. It took me over an hour preaching (on behalf of ICPC and EFCC) a need for the students to work hard in place of thinking of buying their grade. There is no way a building with shaky foundation will have an everlasting structure, I preached. I alternatively advised them to use the money for taking extra classes to cover for their deficiencies. I offered to give them extra classes of mathematics free of charge. They attended only two classes, and I never saw them again. Whenever they see me on the road they immediately dodge. These are student from humble family. They are supposed to work very hard for a better future. What then do we expect of those from rich family? I know it is not that easy for a mindset that is getting ready for financial negotiation for grade to suddenly change to working hard. It requires a lot of confidence building and hard work. In a nutshell, students' attitude toward learning these days is negative, and what they are looking for is more or less a short cut to get good grades and certificates without actually working for it.

On the other hand, the attitude of the lecturers towards academics is not helping matters. The successive strikes our universities experienced in the last two decades or so have turned away the minds of the lecturers away from the academics. In the early days of these strikes, the lecturers were thrown into confusion and redundancy. This is because most of them at that time were full time academicians, and did not know any other business apart from teaching and research. The unwise approach the government used to intimidate the lecturers to go back to classroom by stopping their salaries and throwing them out of their houses opened their eyes for an alternative way of surviving. Gradually, the lecturers were able to intrude into business sector. As a result, hardly will you now get a full time lecturer that does not have one or two other businesses running.

This has resulted into another pathetic attitude in the part of the lecturers, and that is missing classes with impunity. In a semester, not many lecturers are attending more that 50% of their classes. Quite a number attend far less than that. And there seems to be no checks and balances from either school administration or from ASUU to control this practice. This is an area I found fault with ASUU struggle. My belief is that as the government succumbs and adjusts the salaries to a reasonable amount, ASUU should put pressure on it members to do their job effectively; but that doesn't seems to be an area of ASUU's interest. For instance, when I was coming back to Nigeria, I could not get booking for the whole family except for a week after reporting date. I was really worried because I was coming from a system that even the one day of the registration we have to compensate it in some weekends. I made few calls to some of my colleagues; they all told me that I should not worry but just come at the most convenient time. I went directly to school the day I arrived. I was told that the time table was not even ready, and students were still doing registration. To cut the story short, the lectures started carelessly two weeks after my arrival. To my dismay, no compensation was made for the missed THREE weeks. In fact nobody (students, teachers or school administration) even talk about it. As a mater of fact, two weeks to the end of the semester, some lecturers told me that they were yet to attend any class. Interestingly, they were hopeful that they will be able to do something before the exams. I also attended a departmental meeting in which a majority vote of the lecturers indicated that they were ready to start exam in the coming week. However, I was reliably told that some lecturers who said they were ready did not attend any class at that time. Furthermore, it is now a common practice that students don't go back to school on the reporting week, because it is unofficially a lecture-free week.

Students are now so used to missing these classes to the extent that if you are like me who likes teaching, the students will be begging you to stop in the first hour of your two hours class. They do not seem to bother that they are not covering the syllabus. In other words, not knowing what they are supposed to know. No qualms as far as the exams is based on what the teacher is able to cover not on what he is suppose to cover. Even that students struggle to get the question papers of that narrow coverage. With this attitude, students are not fully engaged with homework and lecture that will keep them busy, or even have something to read at their free time. I taught two higher level undergraduate courses, and I know how deficient the students were in lower level courses as a result of these attitudes of both students and lecturers.

One other thing that is diverting the attention of the lecturers is the part-time teaching. You will find a lecturer teaching in three to five universities as a full time staff. And the distance between the schools is hundreds of kilometers. How do you think that this person can effectively carry out this teaching responsibility? In one of the school I visited, I was reliably told that one visiting professor attended the classes only once in the whole semester. And he was given his full salary, and students are done with that course. Some other time the part time teaching is in the same university but in a different program. In all these, no teaching in a real sense of the word is taking place. I know a department in one of the Nigerian universities that has only one permanent teaching staff, and his highest qualification is a Bachelors degree. All other teaching staff are these par-time teachers that you only see ones a while. And the program is surprisingly accredited by NUC

Another indicator of the gloomy future of our educational system is our post-graduate programs. The students coming to the post graduate program are graduates of our system. Therefore, they are coming to specialize in a program or courses that they have but weak foundation. Also, due to a lack of manpower, the lecturers taking these courses are either post graduate student themselves, ill-prepared PhD holders or a busy professor. None of these is mentally and psychologically ready to teach post graduate course and to remedy the students' undergraduate deficiencies. Furthermore, most of these students and the lecturers are having a lot of commitments different from academics. As a result, the quality of our post graduate program is extremely low. Teachers blame the students for lack of seriousness, and the students blame the lecturers of wickedness. At the end, the students compensate for his weakness by taking 'good care' of the lecturer and the lecturer compensate for his incompetency by passing the students regardless of the quality of the work. As we know, post graduate program is both social and academic experience. The issue now has political dimension in our system. A professor told me that PhD students these days after you do the research for them; they expect you to teach them how to defend the work.

The external examiners who are suppose to do the check and balance, are carefully selected from within the system. Therefore, they don't do a thorough job, perhaps due to lack of time and expertise. This is exhibited in the quality of the theses presented in partial fulfillment of the degree. Take a random sample of PhD theses, you will notice that most of them did not add anything to knowledge, rather exposes the deterioration of our educational systems. Not to talk of masters theses.  Quite a number of these PhDs are supervised by people who do not have any training, research contribution or in-depth knowledge in the area they are supervising. They are supervisor just because they have PhD in that subject! Take this as a challenge, pick all the lecturers that supervise up to five PhDs in our universities, I can assure you that majority of the supervisors could not defend large part of what they supervised. Students are just good at compiling other peoples' work, sometime with no citation. We have quite a number of cases, where both the student and the supervisors do not know what the thesis is actually all about. I come across one in which the student, the supervisor and external examiners do not know "anything" on what the "fancy" title is all about. And these ill-prepared PhD graduate will soon be surrounded by many other PhD students. Whom are we deceiving?

Furthermore, a sample look at our journals says a lot about the authors and the editors. The quality of the papers and the number of editorial mistakes is enough to scare you from reading. It is now more or less money generating venture, and "wash me, I wash you". People get their papers published by interchanging their papers with their friends in other universities. These are even the hardworking ones. Many could not even do that. No review in the real sense of the word is taking place. I submitted a paper to one of the "reputable" journals in the country. I was waiting for reviewers' comments when somebody told me that the paper was already published. This is despite all the technical and typographical errors in the paper. Some of the papers are just textbook material compile neatly. Most importantly, the research is not done with a view of adding something to knowledge, rather, just to satisfy the degree or promotion requirement.

I must add here that, the various academic debauchery narrated here should not be equated to lack of talent. We have many potential first class academicians by all standards. However, the system is making it impossible for them to even go close to their potential. Furthermore, despite all this, there are some lecturers albeit small in number, who still have some academic flavor; very decent and do their job effectively. Taking into cognizance of the decadence in the system, this people should serve as a shining example. But to who? The hard work is not appreciated by both the students and school administration. The students are looking at them as unnecessarily making life difficult for them by over working them and by being too strict in their exams. And the school administrations do not seem to have a means of rewarding them. At the same time their colleagues are getting promoted and richer in a Nigerian way!

To be continued