How the sex-for-marks phenomenon damages Nigeria (II)

Last week we considered some of the larger implications of the sex for marks saga that has denuded Nigeria’s academia. This week we look at the balance. 3 points were considered last week. Let us look at the remaining:

4. Flowing from 3 above is that fact that if students are not allowed to study in an atmosphere devoid of fear, their productivity will be subpar. This is where the meat of my writeup lies. Fear has no place in the world of intellectualism. I saw a clip on WhatsApp that our secondary school students in Business Studies have to go around looking for old typewriters for their exams because that is what the curriculum says they must use in the year 2019. Add that to the fact that our children, especially in public universities, study in fear and you will see how these lecturers are mortgaging the future of Nigeria. If students are unable to express themselves because lecturers are harsh, mean, fraudulent, lecherous, manipulating and self-seeking, predatory, wicked, and uncaring, then where will innovations come from? Through this process, the lecturers will promote those who are undeserving, elevate the mediocre and frustrate brilliant students. Does that not tell a story?
5. I attended a ‘village university’ for my BSc. That is the then Ondo State University, now Ekiti State. In those days, it certainly wasn’t the norm for lecturers to harass students. Of course, personalities differ; some lecturers are mean and others easy-going. But we didn’t feel under unnecessary pressure most of the time. None of the Lecturers demanded money for marks as far as I know in my department. We were so free with our lecturers, we saw our exam scores before we left after each semester. Today I believe things have changed at EKSU (like everything degenerates in Nigeria anyway, unfortunately), to the extent that someone revealed on twitter how one lecturer shouted to another in EKSU ‘Omo melo lo to do l’ogba yi to n pe rae ni senior lecturer?’, interpreted as ‘How many girls have you had sex with on this campus to justify your rank as a senior lecturer’. This means that the sexual harassment of girls has become a bragging right today at EKSU. But it was a shock to my system when I went for an MBA at Unilag in 1996/7 and found that lecturers had zero respect for their students. They screamed at us. They failed people willingly. One even asked the Class Rep to tell us he needed N5,000 each from 20 students who will obtain A’s in his exams. The results of first semester year one were not available until second semester year two! That was when students found out they had carry-overs in the first semester of the first year. An exam, they could have retaken in the normal course of events becomes an extra year for them. I felt so violated and oppressed. I left.
6. The world moves on. I have seen reports of sexual harassment in UK universities and elsewhere, but by all means, those cannot compare with jungle Nigeria. Apart from sexual harassment issues, developed countries are so developed because they respect intellectualism and they respect their youths. I went to a far-from-ivy-league university in the UK for my Masters but I still know that they treated us with the utmost respect. In my PhD program at Walden right now, the first thing you learn is the respect you have to show to your fellow students as you interact. I have been able to learn so much given the right atmosphere.

What if a student likes or truly falls in love with a lecturer? It could even be both ways. Look at Macron for example; an extreme scenario. In the clip of Dr Boniface that went viral, as well as Prof Gyampo in Ghana, I think what we have are the more subtle forms of this phenomenon in Nigeria. Whereas these guys could be seen as scapegoats, what beckons to the Nigerian academia is a total overhaul in thinking. Intellectualism cannot be deployed for oppression. Abroad they have gone far. They probably never passed through this curve because there was hardly a time when having a university degree became a life and death issue as it has become here – not because we know what to do with the degrees anyway. The Professor Akindele issue at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, whereby he insisted on 5 rounds of sex or 5 meetings for sex at the student’s expense is more like what happens regularly.  That is the new standard.  It is noteworthy that Boniface and Akindeles are practising pastors! The Bolodeokus of Unilag Economic Department was quite famous for preying on students – as alleged. Yet there are universities where such are rarities in this country. Lecturers have to know that their work is relatively easy compared to what goes on in the outside world; in the private sector for example and that a new group of people are ready to invade the academia and do a better job because teaching and importation should be done with love for knowledge. The essence of academia must change in Nigeria; we must see productivity, we must see our children inventing and innovating stuff and taking control of their future. We cannot afford to keep churning out damaged goods, cowed graduates who also know next to nothing. I couldn’t even have been the type of writer I am today if my lecturers (Professor Ogunleye, Emeritus Professor McFabro Fabayo, Late Dr Oba, Dr Agbogu etc.) had traumatized the hell out of me. I went to a village university, perhaps this was fate, for I had an admission for psychology in Unilag that year, 1987.

That said, it needs to be acknowledged that there are individual differences. Even in Walden, some lecturers are stern and sometimes a bit mean. We can see that the system has buckled their extreme tendencies. At London Metropolitan University, Moorgate, I took on one female lecturer in 2005. She approached her class believing that everyone was stupid and we also did not understand what she was teaching. It was a quantitative class. I knew I shouldn’t be cowed by quants. I passed her class in the C region (my lowest in that degree), but 80% of the class failed. I saw colleagues weeping. Some who went to see her were marched out of her office. So, I took her on headlong; challenged my marks. She sent me on a wild goose chase with regards to the appeal process, but I found a second opinion with my thesis supervisor, the good man Brian Eales. She will remember me for a while, for on graduation day, in spite of her and all, I was one of the three students that bagged a distinction. As I passed by her that day, she said ‘Tope, you’re. Quite a determined man!’. Never liked her. She looked like a character from Harry Porter. Gaunt… Pointed nose… You get. I looked at her and in my head what I said was ‘This one doesn’t know where one is coming from. If she knows the background of the struggle, she will know I can’t be cowered’. I can’t even remember what I said. I politely brushed past.

A new paradigm beckons on Nigeria’s academia. You people are the hope of our salvation from extinction in case you don’t know. You cannot spend the time required for serious business luring girls to some ‘cold room’ for slaughter. Grow up! Get serious!