SIR: Much as proliferation of universities caters for the ever-increasing education needs of a fast-growing nation like ours, it nonetheless comes with its own attendant disadvantages. Particularly if not carefully controlled and meticulously monitored, it is capable of lowering the standard and quality of education. Setting aside any forms of prejudice and acrimony, my resolve to publicise this piece of mine is borne out of my steady belief that whatever can bastardise the Nigerian educational structure should be vehemently opposed, no matter whose ox is gored.
There arose a need to transfer my daughter, Oluwatoitan Christie Omoniyi, student registration number U/18/BA/0279 of the Business Administration Department) from OUI to another university after successfully completing her first academic year. As it is the usual requirements in all universities (public or private, national or international), the university a student is seeking a transfer to will be demanding the student’s academic record of the courses such had offered in the previous university. The usual procedure, we all know, is that this official document has to be sent directly from the student’s former university to the new university.
We approached OUI officially to obtain Christie’s academic transcript, but shockingly, the university bluntly refused to release it, for no just cause. My daughter has paid all necessary school fees and levies and there is no record of any offence levelled her against during the academic session. The only reason for the university’s decision, as insistently stated by the HOD Business Administration and the university registrar is that the university does not issue the student’s academic transcript until after completing a course of study. This position assumed by Oduduwa University Ipetumodu is really strange, in fact stranger than fiction! Till now, all efforts to obtain the document from the university has been a mirage.
To further officialise the matter, I wrote a formal letter to the university’s e-mail account info@oduduwauniversity.edu.ng and even president@oduduwauniversity.edu.ng (one supposedly belonging to OUI Founder/Owner). Still, no response, no action taken. I then considered contacting the Nigerian University Commission (NUC) through its official e-mail address info@nuc.edu.ng. Incredibly still, no intervention has hitherto come forth in respect of the issue.
One begins to wonder if the NUC, a body saddled with the responsibility of regulating and sanitizing the activities of our universities to save our university education system from being bastardized, is not responsive to a matter as sensitive as this, who then will? Or is the NUC in support of the discretion to withhold a student academic transcript as being currently wielded by OUI and possibly other private universities taking such a strange stance?
I will like to ask the Minister of Education and other relevant stakeholders in the Nigerian education sector to answer this mind-boggling question: does a whole university or the NUC itself need to be enlightened that the student academic transcript is strictly an official document that can be requested by another university from within or outside the country whenever a student is seeking a transfer from one university to another and that such has to be sent unconditionally even without delay?
With all sense of seriousness, need be for us as Nigerians to act beyond crudity and parochialism and align our educational policies and practices to international standard.
- Akinyinka Omoniyi, Ibadan.
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