The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Ivory tower

  • Ivory tower perversions

    Ivory tower perversions

    •It’s essential to ensure integrity of postgraduate education in Nigeria

    A report published in The Guardian of November 29, 2024 quoted the Director, Public Affairs, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Abdulmumin Oniyangi, as stating: “The Board of Trustees of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has approved the suspension of the foreign component of the TETFund Scholarship for Academic Staff (TSAS) intervention. The suspension, which is in response to the excessive cost of training in foreign institutions as well as the high rate of abscondment of foreign (trained) scholars is with effect from 1st January 2025. However, TETFund scholars, who have already enrolled in foreign institutions, would continue to draw down on their scholarships till the end of their programmes.” The natural consequence of this development is the increase in TETFund sponsorship for postgraduate studies in Nigerian universities.

    This places a lot of responsibility on these universities’ Postgraduate (PG) Boards, Managements, and the Committee of Provosts (of PG colleges or schools). Established around 1989/1990, the Committee’s vision is “to cultivate a vibrant academic community where excellence thrives, innovation flourishes, and every individual is empowered to reach their full potential.” Its mission is, correspondingly, “to champion academic excellence, foster inclusive learning environments, and advance transformative initiatives that elevate the quality of education and scholarship across our institutions.”

    Its core value is also defined as follows: “In essence, the committee is committed to advancing academic excellence, fostering inclusivity, promoting innovation, and maintaining accountability within the institutions.”

    In the spirit of maintaining accountability within the PG system, a set of allegations of unedifying conduct that has been trending on social media from around the middle of December 2024, in relation to PG supervision and oral defence involving external examiners, should be of interest to the Committee of Provosts. The allegations were made by current and former postgraduate students or their relatives or associates against supervisors and departments.

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    While granting that some of the allegations may have been exaggerated or even outrightly fabricated, the complaints include the following: “I decided I’d never have anything else to do with Nigerian universities, the day I saw people defending their master’s dissertation presenting coolers of rice, garden eggs and crates of drinks to their supervisors. I thought someone was getting married.”  (Bibian U.)

    “We were told we’d pay 60k each, for both entertainment and logistics of the external examiner/ supervisor.” (Chiamaka O.)

    “We spent the night prior to my mother’s defence at the University of Ilorin, cooking coolers of rice with assorted meat for the lecturers.” (Omekagu)

     Some other complaints: “We fed the whole department.

    Paid a prior fee of 2k. Still gave the supervisor a gift. This same supervisor then came on one of my Facebook posts to say how I’m too opinionated to get married. I blocked him for my peace of mind. I don’t have strength.”  (Sylvia E.)

    “My husband was so frustrated by his Uniuyo supervisor for this, that he abandoned his MBA and finally got it from a UK university without any sort of bribery.” (Uche N.)

    “The best thing I ever did for my life and mental health was to abandon my master’s programme halfway. My blood pressure was always high. They killed my zeal to study and do research. Nigerian universities? God forbid!”  (Ene P.)

     More complaints: “I abandoned my master’s programme because my supervisor wanted to have sex with me. I told him I’m a married woman. He said and I quote, ‘That’s even better! I like them married. If anything happens, we’ll both keep our mouths shut.’ No one listened to my report.” (Annie U.)

    “And postgraduate students do multiple defences – proposal, internal and faculty defence, then the very almighty external defence. Multiple seminars too.  And refreshment is served in ALL.  I swear, MSc/PhD in Nigeria was the most challenging thing I’ve done in my life so far.”

     The common thread running through the allegations is that PG students are being subjected to emotional and psychological pressure, financial exploitation and sexual harassment. This is despicable, and all relevant stakeholders need to make concerted efforts to investigate and report erring persons to the appropriate authorities for due sanctions in order to protect the students and create for them a conducive environment for optimal academic performance.

    With reference to the complaints of financial burden placed on students, the question arises: What do the different universities do with the school fees which the students pay? These fees are expected to be used to pay supervision allowance and meet the financial costs of external examiners’ travel, accommodation and examination allowance. So, how come students are made vulnerable to exploitative supervisors and departments?

    The National Universities Commision (NUC) has a key role to play in addressing the kind of complaints listed above to ensure and maintain the integrity of PG studies in Nigeria, instead of undermining university autonomy and usurping the powers of University Senates by imposing curricula on universities. It is time to reform PG education in Nigeria.

  • Ivory tower ‘constituency projects’

    Ivory tower ‘constituency projects’

    • Politicians now reward constituents with lecturer jobs!

    As the National Universities  Commission (NUC) prepares to pay programme content quality, physical facilities adequacy and academic staff sufficiency accreditation visits to different universities every year, an annual scramble for the appointment of lecturers of different cadres is set off. This was usually the case, because of the widely-acknowledged academic staff availability challenge in the Nigerian university system. It was within this precarious situation that an embargo on appointments was announced by the Federal Government in 2020, and the policy was extended to the appointment of university academic staff. Vice-Chancellors were therefore faced with the dilemma of complying with the jobs embargo and concurrently meeting very stringent NUC academic staff-mix accreditation requirements.

    With the worsening problem of unemployment in the country, it became a mark of success for legislators to indicate how many of their constituents they had found jobs for in the different sectors of the society. In fact, some legislators have posed with pride in photographs with such employed constituents. 

    An insidious development in this regard was for such testimony to be extended to the number of university lecturing jobs a legislator has found their constituents. In other words, university academic jobs became an item of legislators’ constituency projects. 

    It was possible for such constituency-project-rated jobs to exist, because the embargo allowed special waivers to be granted to universities that applied for the waivers. This left room for unethical practices such as arm-twisting respective vice-chancellors to accommodate the candidates of officials in the waiver-granting establishments. As the universities continued to be denuded of autonomy with respect to academic appointments, all sorts of aberrant practices continued to be witnessed.

    Some of the university teachers employed aberrantly are expected to leave of their own accord, having not been sufficiently prepared to cope with the quite challenging and not particularly economically-rewarding task of university teaching. But some are likely to hang on and constitute themselves into all sorts of problems to the university system, as they try to re-enact and perpetuate the perversions through which they themselves got employed. 

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    It is gratifying to note that the compromise-breeding embargo on academic and non-academic appointments has now been lifted as part of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s commitment to grant or restore robust autonomy to the universities. It is to the credit of university academic staff unions, the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities and the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Nigerian Federal Universities that they kept voicing out their dissatisfaction with the perverse academic appointments’ state of affairs while it lasted. And they must continue to resist any future attempts to hamstring the universities and compromise quality. 

    Moreover, vice-chancellors should not compromise with respect to maintaining quality service and discipline of staff, irrespective of the circumstances of the appointment of the staff. As the problem of youth employment continues to be aggravated, culminating in what has come to be referred to as the “japa syndrome” – the large scale economically-motivated emigration of, especially, young Nigerians – the question has started to be raised whether it was wise to have raised or to continue to raise the retirement age of civil servants in various sectors of government establishments, and whether a comprehensive downward review would not be desirable.

    Finally, increased operational autonomy should not be an excuse for the Federal Government to repudiate its responsibility for the adequate or optimal funding of university education.