It is time to begin to generate new practical ideas for action with regard to the resuscitation or rescue of the comatose Nigerian university system. We have had enough of unprofitable, empty rhetoric. Corruption bedevils the system. However, one form of corruption or the other is also found in every university around the world. This menace (corruption) has a wide range of meanings.
Indeed, many Romanian lawmakers, having used their influence to ensure accreditation of universities and/or courses, end up being appointed professors. Professorship has become a token of gratitude. This is the Romanian brand of “pantamised” professorship. However, the government of Romania and other stakeholders are trying to address this absurdity of monstrous proportions. Similarly, many American universities admit candidates with lower standards because they are good sportsmen and women. Such students are sacred cows who freely engage in corrupt practices, as the school authorities look the other way.
The underlying motive of the management is economic/financial survival. Successes in athletics are a sure way of getting more donations from a number of organisations or private companies as well as wealthy individuals. Unlike in Nigeria, the US universities do not get appreciable level of subsidy from the government. Apart from athletics, these universities get funds from endowments, grants, and tuition fees especially from international students.
There are also challenges of plagiarism, “sextortion” (sex as a currency of bribe or sexual exploitation of female students), padding of personnel’s budgets, appointment of people without following due process, embezzlement of funds, and promoting academics based on ethnic/sub-ethnic sentiment and/or cronyism. These forms of corruption are prevalent in the Nigerian university system. The ugliness leads to low quality service delivery. As a matter of fact, many of the graduates especially in the engineering fields are too professionally weak to contribute concretely to the growth and development of the construction industry and by extension, national economy. Not unexpectedly, Nigeria continues to depend almost completely on foreign engineers sometimes, with polytechnic diplomas. Degrees are fast becoming ordinary titles for boosting the egos of holders. Currently, most Nigerian graduates are highly unemployable. This is an outgrowth of unfettered, endemic corruption be-devilling university education.
Things are going from bad to worse. Village patriotism has become a fetish as mediocre academics continue to have a field day. We are moving from universities to “villagesities.” No more international students. Similarly, appointing academics into top management positions like vice-chancellorship and deanship is now becoming a matter of the nearness of a candidate’s village to a given institution. The recent display of monumental barbarity at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife epitomises the maladies afflicting contemporary Nigerian academia. By this primitive instinct or misstep, an incalculable amount of “reputational” damage has been done to the essence of Nigeria’s university education. The glory days of university education in the country have taken flight. All kinds of “universities” are now mushrooming, with a lot of political merchants masquerading as academics and/or administrators. Thus, for example, on April 5, the Senate passed a bill seeking to establish a Federal University of Medical Sciences and Biomedical Technology in each of the six geo-political zones of the country. New federal universities of agriculture are also in the pipeline. Establishing more bogus varsities in the face of chronic underfunding of the older ones, is an insulting behaviour to Nigeria. This act of brazen political corruption threatens the country’s survival in a myriad of ways. Nigerians should appeal to the National Universities Commission to stop this filth. The NUC should not make a joke of this issue. Again, several professorship promotions/appointments are being made on the basis of sentiment. The university – a centre of excellence in research and teaching, is now crumbling into dust. This scenario makes me sick to my stomach, particularly when many academics (like a conquered lot) continue to celebrate or idolise those who have short-changed our system so brazenly. Therefore, an intellectual revolution has to begin now, otherwise the country’s future is going to be bleaker than we are currently imagining.
Nigeria needs a coalition of a wide range of stakeholders such as students, a few former vice-chancellors (with a proven track record in astute management), union leaders, and current university administrators. The centrality of inclusiveness to robust university administration cannot be contested. There should be a few spaces for students in the senate, council, and other levels of administration. This paves the way for effective communication and participation across the board. Such an approach reduces suspicions and strains to the barest minimum. University administration is a world away from a secret organisation. Education is a critical sub-system of the larger society with a set of expectations. However, these goal specifications are not fixed once and for all, understandably because every society is in a constant process of transformation. Our universities have to be responsive to all these emerging sensitivities and expectations.
The government cannot afford to fold its arms as many university heads and their cronies blatantly mismanage available resources. There must be some monitors aside from the regular ones. These new monitors must also be secretly checked in order to get positive results with respect to how financial resources (among other things) of each institution are being handled. This is how we can begin to experience a joint academic enterprise as if healthy society matters.
Painfully, this is not the case in Nigeria largely because treasury looters among other enemies of society, are not adequately punished. Even sometimes, the system glorifies corruption by giving greater assignments, to those who have messed up at the lower level of leadership. There is something fishy going on here. Thus, for example, how can the government be giving monies to universities without effective monitoring?
Economic/financial recklessness has gradually become a popular tradition. Demons are let loose upon our national space. Consequently, a Nigerian leader would be regarded as a moron if he refused to loot the public treasury. But despite this situation, it is not completely all doom and gloom for the university system in Nigeria, a geo-polity currently defined and ruled by a blatant disregard for patriotism and sustainable socio-economic growth and development. If truth be told, the revolution being advocated for here, has to among other things, put robust wages of university staff especially academics on the list of priorities. Impoverishment of university lecturers especially professors (while a Nigerian senator gets the highest pay among his peers across the global village), is a very crude insult not only to the intelligentsia, but the entirety of the citizenry.
Good quality education is the engine complex of any country. The material poverty/agonies being inflicted on the Nigerian university staff, is/are a subtle invitation to more corrupt practices. Desperately vying for public positions on our university campuses, will be drastically reduced in the face of much better salaries and allowances. Such a development will enable academics to devote themselves to rigorous teaching and research more than hitherto. A piecemeal approach by the stakeholders to dealing with the monstrous challenges listed above is not going to be sufficiently helpful in the long run.
- Prof. Ogundele writes from University of Ibadan.