Daily Independent (Lagos)
Soyombo Opeyemi
9 July 2009
opinion
Continued from last Friday
I think it is apt to employ this opportunity to call for some drastic changes in the operations of Nigerian universities . The very idea of a lecturer having the power to determine when a student should graduate is quite offensive and undemocratic, especially in the light of abuses highlighted earlier in this discourse. I have heard ASUU members argue, again and again, that no good student can be successfully victimized. It's the most infantile argument I've ever heard; in fact, scandalous because this is coming from university dons. Students are not equally endowed. There are A students as well as B, C and D students. While it may, theoretically, be difficult to successfully victimize an A or B candidate, it is pretty easier to victimize a C or D student. Are the average students therefore not at the mercy of prurient lecturers? And what percentage of our tertiary students are in the A or B category? Certainly, not the majority. But the reality on our campuses is that no student is immune from victimization. We've heard cases where sadistic lecturers removed some pages of answer booklets and later blamed the candidates for the offence. Even an A student may be weak in a particular course and hence could only run away with a mere pass. Can such a student not be victimized easily in the said course? The randy dons have however become wiser; they fail you through their proxies so you may not lay any blame at their doorsteps.
I therefore call for the introduction of external exterminations in our varsities. The course content of an engineering student at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), for example, is the same at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO). Exams to be written in FUTA can be set in FUTO and marked in FUTO or in another university. Any candidate who writes a GSM number on his/her script must earn dismissal. The power of lecturers to hold students to ransom would therefore be dealt a fatal blow. But more than this, students would then engage in serious studies, which would enhance the quality of products released into the society from our ivory towers.
As obtains in some institutions abroad, university students should be involved in the appraisal system of their lecturers. This will certainly make the lazy and absentee lecturers to sit up. The empty-brained dons who copy textbooks word for word and present them to students as their notes will be shown the way out. As a matter of fact, this system of appraisal will go a long way towards solving a myriad of problems confronting the university system.
While I acknowledge the rights of dons to form an association, they should know that education is on the concurrent list in the 1999 Constitution. It is therefore not compulsory for a lecturer in Lagos to earn the same salary and allowances as another in Katsina or Bayelsa. The cost of living is not the same in these states.
ASUU cannot afford to remain perpetually in the trenches. It is time to remove first the log in your eye before you can be in a moral position to ask the government to remove the speck in its own. Those who seek equity must come with clean hands. I however recognize those members of ASUU, who, in spite of the difficult situation in the country, labour day and night to give the best to their students. Such lecturers understand of course that they are a building a future for our dear country. We must not give up on Nigeria.
Final Notes
A compatriot said on AIT's programme, People's Parliament, that she spent ten years for a course of five years due to strikes by ASUU - local and national. The question is: for those five lost years, did ASUU members get their salaries? Of course they did. So heads or tails, ASUU seems to have nothing to lose for its perennial industrial action. Perhaps it is this understanding that led to the position of a parent who said recently that if ASUU did not call off the ongoing strike, he might be forced to go to court to obtain an injunction to stop the government from paying their salaries: "Others cannot be collecting salaries for working while ASUU members will be collecting salaries for striking; yes, ASUU has a right to go on a strike but government equally has the right to pay only for work done."
Otunba (Dr.) Alex Onabanjo, the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of OOU had this to say in a recent advertorial in the Punch (10/06/09) on the state of rot in his university: 'It is in Olabisi Onabanjo University that one finds a situation where examination scripts were not marked and graded for three years. It is there that you find graduates of four years without transcripts, not to talk of certificates... Mark boosting is the order of the day. In a particular department, marks of more than 300 out of 500 students that sat for the examination of a particular course were discovered to have been boosted beyond the original marks legitimately earned. In another department, a lecturer gave the whole score sheets of his course to a female student, who served as the go-between in the 'business' transaction of mark boosting. So bad was the situation that it is trite knowledge that the eventual marks of many students of OOU are a function of the financial and sexual power of those concerned. It was also discovered that very many lecturers were involved in the extortion of students through the sale of hand-outs... discretionary admission (that is, admissions not based on merit but on 'connections') became the order of the day, sometimes adding up to 50% of total admissions... the University Management could not even keep a tab on the number of its students at any given time...'
'Very many of the revenue generating centres of the University (such as the Centre for Sandwich Programmes) were taken out of the purview of the Bursar. With that arrangement, financial malpractices became the order of the day... The University continues to pay drivers even when Senior Staff members entitled to them do receive allowance for drivers as part of their salaries in line with the monetisation policy. Perhaps the most embarrassing of this pattern of irresponsible employment is the case of the University Guest House which has only 4 rooms but with 32 workers!....Quite a number of academic staff also benefited from promotions either without requisite number of publications or following due process...'
The rot in OOU is the same in virtually all public universities in the country. The reader should judge whether what the Nigerian university system needs now is funding or purging! My wife suffered horrendous frustrations just to obtain a transcript from LASU. I often wonder if ASUU members - the greatest critics of government - who are now in management positions in their various varsities cannot run efficiently, smoothly and transparently such small communities, how then will they perform if they were to run the affairs of this nation?
*Concluded
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