Academic processes and procedures have been bastardized
by many universities in Nigeria. I mentioned in the preceding
piece ‘Nigerian Universities and the Bastardization of
Admission Processes’ that the decay in the admission
processes started from the early nineties. The same period
witnessed so much strike that academic activities were
flippantly suspended. I spent five years in the university for a
four- year programme and witnessed three Academic Staff
Union of Universities(ASUU )strikes in my 2nd, 3rd and 4th
year led by Dr Attahiru Jega and Dr Assisi Asobie plus
‘Babangida Must Go’ riot which led to closure of
universities. Cumulatively extra thirteen months were added
to the academic calendar. Thus the first bastardization of
academic processes and procedures is the frequent
disagreement between government and lecturers leading to
industrial disputes . Whenever the disputes are suspended,
students get rushed through examinations without adequate
notice resulting in mass failures and carry over.
Due to frequent strikes, some idle students gets involved
in vices ranging from r*pe to murder, cultism, drunkenness,
drugs,robbery, fraud and when academic activities finally
resumes, these behaviorally downgraded students pollutes
the already tensed academic environment with their new
found vice, fostering cultism and criminal activities on
campuses.
While the vice ridden campuses constitutes academic
nuisance, the activities of lecturers who constantly harass
female students with s*xual advances is another form of
academic bastardization. These female students especially the
cute, sexy and kinky among them are deliberately failed in
examinations so that they will surrender their under wears to
the lustful teachers. Those that refused to submit their
bodies are deliberately kept on campuses while their
colleagues graduate till they recant their stiff neckedness. In
July 2013 female students of Creative Arts Department of
University of Lagos were so abused by the sexually rampaging
lecturers that they had to go on public protest to preserve
their cherished womanhood. They urged the Vice Chancellor,
Prof. Raheem Bello, to investigate the allegation and bring the
culprits to book. During my time as a student union leader, I
took up such issues with the university authority severally
though those who indulge in it then do so more discreetly-now
it is openly solicited.
In addition to s*xual harassment, there is the problem of
truant lecturers who abandon their academic tutorship to
gallivant around for other businesses. This truancy is
noticeable in schools in Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt and other
first generation universities domiciled in cities where various
political, business and social activities abound. These
gallivanting lecturers appear in the lecture hall sometimes once
or twice per semester, issue handouts and disappear again.
The students end up hearing and knowing nothing especiallly in
technical related courses, engineering, accounting and
sciences .I have had course to jokingly ask some senior
lecturers and professor friends of mine whether they
actually see their students, especially from the manner they
absent themselves during academic seasons.
Coupled with the truancy of lecturers is the issue of
falsification of results in the examinations records registry.
Some students have learned the act of influencing workers at
the exams registry so that results could be falsified to
upgrade their low academic status. In March 2013, Abia State
University had to withdraw an academic degree they issued a
former governor of the state because according to them, it
was irregularly awarded. Sometime around 2009 authorities
of a university in Benin discovered that their computerized
registry has been compromised. Some fraudsters actually
inserted names of non existent students into the system and
were awarding results to them at every turn. When this
computer manipulation was discovered, the school sought the
assistance of a US owned IT firm in Abuja and that was when
I knew about the issue. The school was advised to install
Oracle database and run it on Linux platform.
There is the Education Tax Fund (ETF) which requires that
every corporate firm pays 2% of their profit towards the
education fund. In 2011 a new act established the Tertiary
Education Trust Fund (TETFund) requiring corporate firms to
dedicate 2% of their realizable profit to tertiary education. In
2012 alone, FIRS remitted N183 billion naira to ETF . Where is
the impact of 183 billion naira collected in 2012 by ETF on the
nation’s tertiary education system. ETF could transform
university education by applying these funds towards
provision of hostel accommodation, lecture halls, research
support, library etc. There is also the annual education budget
from the presidency to augment, all these are enough to
improve the quality of educational services in Nigeria . This
Education Trust Fund has over the years been a chess pool of
corruption and the funds used to settle politicians and party
loyalists with fictitious spending.
All this turns the student’s academic life cycle into a bundle of
turbulence and the processes serially bastardized. One of the
attractions of some private universities in Nigeria is the
stability of academic procedures. Thus parents could predict
when their wards would graduate from school. There is also
low incidence of s*xual harassment, truant lecturers and
incompetent ones who have refused to upgrade their
knowledge base are weeded out. However, the gain of some
of these universities is countered by the exorbitant cost of
enrollment. Highly rated Covenant University, Otta, owned by
Winners Chapel charges about N520, 000 per session as at
2013 and many cannot afford such per head-though the
church offers scholarship to some of their members to study
there. Therefore, the poor will have no option than to contend
with the decayed system.
The Nigerian student suffers a plethora of adversities which
makes them unable to grasp the much intended knowledge
transfer. Little wonder many of them cannot defend their
certificates anywhere. I have had course to interview and
discuss with groups of fresh accounting graduates desirous
of jobs and was shocked that a some of them have not
grasped the basics of Double Entry Book Keeping, while more
cannot perform simple Bank Reconciliation Statements.
Seeking explanations on management accounting issues like
Break-Even Analysis, Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis would
get them stare at you as if you are Hollywood film actor and
you dare not probe further to seek computations of
Discounted Cash Flows( DCF), Net Present Value(NPV),
Internal Rate of Return (IRR) , Equivalent Annual Cost (EAC)
all of which are elementary to capital budgeting techniques.
Asking them to prepare detailed cash budgets or cash flow
analysis for a given period is akin to asking too much. This
sorry state made lots of companies to spend millions in
retraining their personnel before they could undertake simple
tasks. The students are simply being denied the environment
to grow in knowledge.
The Nigerian Government should declare a state of emergency
on tertiary education. They should sanitize the processes of
gaining admissions and regularize the academic procedures to
disenfranchise truant lecturers, checkmate academic
victimization and s*xual harassment. The lecturers should be
provided the enabling environment to undertake serious
academic experiment. Staff of the Universities should be
adequately remunerated to reduce incidence of abandonment
of duty. The academic community should have upper hand in
who become the Vice Chancellor and the University Visitor,
whether president or governor, should minimize interference.
Constant exorbitant increment in school fees by government
funded universities should be discouraged.Further
embezzlement of ETF funds should stops and government
must ensure that this fund is applied to aid tertiary education
and end the bastardized academic procedures in Nigerian
universities.
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