What Nigeria is hobbled on all fronts is a reality enormously supported by the existential woes of a disproportionate majority of its inhabitants. The country’s key institutions are effectively dysfunctional where they are not totally moribund. It is the reason behind its continual starkly horrible position among the columns of countries with uninspiring records on good governance and human development initiatives. Whether it is the Ibrahim Index on African Governance of September 2014 which rated Nigeria as an eminent member of the group of the worst governed countries in Africa, or the UNDP Human Development Report of the same year which ranked the country low on all vital markers of development, the bald fact is that the most populous black nation on earth is very much in the woods of myopic leadership, wanton corruption, institutional anomie, pervasive lawlessness, unsustainable economic policies, and avoidable crippling youth unemployment.
The knowledge factories of the country are not without their tell-tale signs of persistent decay and progressive decline in quality along the three legs on which they are propped, namely research, teaching, and community service. Nigeria’s higher institutions of learning regularly fare well in operating at a distance from the culture of excellence that defines other lighthouses of knowledge in other places, beginning from a few countries like Ghana and South Africa on the African continent. Having lost the light in their houses owing to a number of avoidable factors, it is hardly any surprise that the products of our higher institutions of learning are everything but round and sound. It is even of no surprise that parents who can afford it now prefer to dispatch their wards, posthaste, to other countries whose educational systems are firmly rooted in the earth of high standard and quality performance.
But even when it appears some of our higher public educational institutions are casting off the burdening bog of lacklustre performance in the execution of their objectives, there is always some totally preventable disappointing reality that often stands out like a sore thumb. In the shining armour of a few federal universities in Nigeria inching towards a resurgence of the best tradition of a university, there is always a depressing chink.
It is against the foregoing backdrop that one views the recent ranking of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) as the best higher institution of learning in Nigeria. According to reports in some national dailies and online news portals, an international institute which concerns itself with ranking universities across the world, Cybermetrics Lab of Spain, considered OAU as the primus inter pares for the fifth unbroken time, with the universities of Lagos and Ilorin trailing behind in the second and third positions respectively. The research organisation, which is owned by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, based its assessment on such areas as the curricular, research, academic and general administration of the university.
Ordinarily this should delight the heart, considering the fact that the indices which the international research group considered in reaching its conclusion in the ranking of OAU as the best are critical to the continuous relevance of any university that is not a knowledge factory in name and structures mainly. Research, needless to stress, is the lifeblood of any higher institution of learning. It is the long-winding, circuitous, interminable path to the treasure troves of knowledge that can help to scale down mountainous socio-economic problems. The same is true of teaching, curricular design and administration. Where those are sensibly handled and intelligently coordinated, the entire country will be the better for it.
While I agree that OAU in research outputs, and to a certain degree in its curriculums in some programmes, is showing more than a promise to connect fittingly with the culture of best practices in the real academic world, I should like to observe that some chinks abound in the magnificent armour of the university in the areas of teaching and general administration. I have robust interactions with a few students of the university across some departments. They regale me with horrid tales of how comfortable some of their lecturers are with boycotting lectures or habitually turning up late for lectures. The ones who barely show up and those who stroll in thirty minutes late for a lecture of one hour all have something in common – arrogant silence. They often consider it below them to explain their inexcusable absences or justify their half-hour appearances. I have been told repeatedly about some of the female lecturers in the Faculty of Education giving such reprehensible excuses like going to the salon for their hairdos. Also, lecturers gladly ignore their lectures all in the name of going to pick their children in schools.
There are other lecturers who consider it a transgression for their students to raise questions on their ‘lectures’. They frown gravely at the whole idea of being questioned on certain points, a development which astoundingly negates a core essence of a university. Nevertheless, a disproportionately high number of students continue to return positive assessments of these misbehaving lecturers whenever they are to attend to the lecturer assessment sheet designed by the university. Students betray their consciences to do that because they have been threatened by their lecturers and so fear the backlash of poor grade or delay in graduation. While there are diligent, disciplined and dedicated lecturers with enviable work ethics in OAU, I fear to report that those completely opposite at various levels are gaining wider space.
Rather than dismiss these claims, the school management would do well to investigate them. They will not sweat much before they discover those mortifying practices. The organisation which rates the school in that cheering manner may be unaware of the trouble with teaching and the attitude of lecturers to teaching in OAU, but the top echelons of the school must never enjoy the self-deception encouraged by the tide of the positive rating. They must avoid the false comfort that such rating is likely to inspire, considering the subsisting dent in the area of teaching. Enviable research culture and good curriculums will not take care of the culture of teaching, just as shoddy attitudes of lecturers cannot help in grooming the round and sound students who can give good account of themselves anywhere.
Moreover, there are equally appalling tales to tell in the area of general administration. Many of the non-teaching staff of OAU can be terrible when it comes to doing their jobs. They are mostly incompetent, unfriendly, and slothful. Even the school management can be very disappointing and draconian in their management of crises. Their recent response to the actions of the Non-Academic Staff Union of the university further revealed management inadequacy. Even issues concerning student welfare, protests, and demands are too often managed ineptly, thus affirming the view that Nigerian university mangers need more than a crash course in human and material management.
OAU may have added another feather to its small cap; but its top officials must note that rather than mafficking, they need to rise stoutly to check the menacing tide which seeks to totally erode the quality and substance of teaching and general administration under their watchful eyes. Otherwise, Africa’s most beautiful campus risks becoming the white, outwardly glittering but inwardly rotten sepulchre the Nazarene talks about in his parable.
- Adediran wrote in from Enuwa, Ile-Ife, Osun State.
