Lecturers ‘cut corners’ to get promotion

Lecturers in many universities across the country are cutting corners to become professors, findings by Daily Trust have revealed.

Our correspondents report that the situation is prevalent in many federal, state and private universities as teachers struggle to get promotion.

According to the data obtained from the website of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Nigeria presently has 43 Federal Universities, 52 state universities, and 79 private universities.

Although different universities reportedly have different criteria and guidelines for the appointment and promotion of academic staff, the procedures are allegedly being flouted in some tertiary institutions thereby heightening concerns over the increase in academic fraud by lecturers to get promotions.

Sources said teachers in some instances curry favours from managements, while others engaged in plagiarism and counterfeiting of documents to get promoted.

An assistant lecturer at one of the federal universities said there were cases in which applicants for the position of professor had to “bind amended copies of master’s and PhD dissertations presented abroad and include someone’s ISBN” before forwarding them to promotion committees, and added that “to my surprise, they sailed through.”

Examples abound

Daily Trust reports that many professors who allegedly violated guidelines and got promotions at the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture (MOUA), Umudike, were recently demoted by the management. A professor who did not want his identity disclosed, said in the last three years, several professors had been demoted to the positions of senior lecturer or associate professor.

He said the exercise had drastically reduced the number of professors in the affected university to 58.

According to another source, some of the lecturers reverted to lower positions, while some paid huge sums of money to officials as bribe for career advancement.

He said some who were demoted allegedly plagiarised the work of others “word for word,” while few of them were said to have paid “brilliant graduate students” to write articles for them, and added that “there were lecturers that submitted fake certificates.”

According to him, a total of 33 professors were demoted to the position of associate professors or senior lecturers by the governing council of the university after an employee verification exercise.

Among them, 17 persons were demoted to associate professors and eight were directed to revert to the position of senior lecturers. In the same vein, eight associate professors were demoted to senior lecturers, while 17 senior lecturers were downgraded to the position of Lecturer I.

Daily Trust further learnt that the council approved the decision at its 21st emergency meeting held between Monday, May 13 and Thursday, May 16, 2019.

In a letter to the affected lecturers signed by the Registrar of the university, Mrs. Jacinta N. Ogwo-Agu, the lecturers were told that the action was sequel to protests by some concerned staff.

The letter titled: “Council’s Decision on Staff Audit/Proper Placement”, explained that the decision to demote the lecturers was based on recommendations of a committee on petitions received by the Minister of Education in respect of appeals by some staff on proper placement.

When contacted on the issue, the Public Relations Officer of the university, Mrs. Adanma Odefa, said the exercise was not demotion per se, but “proper placement of persons who were not originally occupying the positions they ought to occupy.”

Mrs. Odefa explained that the university conducted “staff audit” at various departments where it was discovered that there were employees who were wrongly placed and the council decided to put things right.

According to the University Bulletin (Match/April 2019) where the governing council’s decisions were published, the names of 102 academic staff demoted in different departments were released, out of which 33 of them were professors.

The spokesperson said a petition filed by concerned members of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) on some lecturers illegally promoted and their performances led to the personnel audit.

Unijos

Meanwhile, some lecturers at the University of Jos (Unijos) revealed how some of their colleagues bought research papers and articles, as well as publish papers in journals that did not exist to ensure they met promotion criteria.

Daily Trust spoke to two lecturers who claimed the pressure to “publish or perish” had lecturers involved in several shoddy deals to move up the ladder.

One of the lecturers from the Faculty of Social Science said there were some lecturers who published in “ghost journals,” and added that, “I call them ghost journals because the journals actually do not exist.”

Painting a similar picture, a female lecturer with the university said it was unfortunate that the urge to publish works to get promoted had laid emphasis on quantity instead of quality within the academic domain.

She said, “I know of those who hired people to write for them, while others publish in predatory journals that are not necessarily accredited; people only pay money and get their journals published there. The Deputy Registrar, Information and Publications of the Unijos, Abdullahi Abdullahi, said all promotions followed due process.

Abdullahi said the criteria for promotion were clearly written and that except a lecturer met the criteria, they would not be promoted. He stressed that the procedure was difficult to breach or bypass, and added that there had never been any instance where promotion exercise did not follow due process.

Unimaid

A senior lecturer at the University of Maiduguri (Unimaid) said the manner in which lecturers looked for ways to cut corners during promotion was threatening to devalue university education.

He said promotion of academic staff from the position of assistant lecturer to professor is based on merit and was time-served, but alleged that there were instances in which “certain things happen and many of the conditions for promotion required to be met are violated.”

He explained that, “For instance, candidates applying for the position of professor must have PhD, have at least 15 high impact articles and publications in reputable journals and are from the grade of senior lecturer of five years standing.”

The lecturer alleged that some lecturers that had not got the required number of outstanding research and publications were reportedly promoted to the position of professor, while many that had not obtained their first and second degrees or first and third degrees in related fields were also promoted; in contradiction with the guidelines.

According to him, journals of international standard were confirmed by the Appointment and Promotion Committees (A&PC) at the department, faculty and central levels, while all the articles in such journals must be peer-reviewed, indexed and must reflect international authorship.

Also, a book for the purpose of promotion must be at least between 80 and 85 pages, published by a reputable publishing house with ISBN number, and had to be a product of thorough assessment by scholars in the area of specialisation.

He further said, “Evidence of peer review for books is mostly presented to the committees because articles in journals, books/chapters and conference papers carry different points.

“For example, articles in journals could carry between 0 and 5 points, a chapter in a book 0-3 and a book 0-10 points.”

He added that the situation was rather dicey in private and new state universities that were to a great extent looking for recognition from the regulatory bodies because they typically employ senior lecturers from other universities and promote them to the grades of readers and professors after breaching all the stipulated standards.

Reacting to the issue, the ASUU Chairman of the University of Maiduguri, Prof. Dani Mamman, said any lecturer who joined the university from any other university and applied for promotion would have to submit their publications to meet the requirements of the university and that if the documents did not meet the requirements, he would not be granted the promotion.

He explained that if the academic staff seeking promotion was within the Unimaid system, he would have to go through departmental and faculty promotion committees, as well as the university council for screening

He further said the VC would appoint three out of six external assessors recommended by the dean of the faculty of the staff seeking the promotion and that if two or all the three failed them, or, especially by detecting plagiarism in one of the publications they submitted, they would be demoted, and would not be promoted for a certain number of years.

BUK

At Bayero University Kano (BUK), some lecturers who spoke to Daily Trust, said there was a laid down procedure which was being followed to the latter in promoting staff, and that there were decisive factors that one must satisfy before being promoted, but admitted that infringements could come in on few occasions. One of them who spoke on condition of anonymity said virtually all the lecturers had some sort of satisfaction, knowing that promotions were done based solely on merit.

He explained that, “First of all, it is done every three years and no one would get it before they complete that time. Once it’s time, you fill all the necessary forms wherein you state all the supporting documents you have that qualify you for promotion. You also have to attach all the documents you stated to the forms, including your publications for submission before the promotion committee.”

Another lecturer said he was aware of some illegal promotion cases found in one university.  He said, “However, this is not possible in BUK. We all know that merit is strictly adhered to in all academic and administrative matters here.”

Maitama Sule varsity

Similarly, at the Yusuf Maitama Sule University (YMSU), Kano, lecturers who spoke to Daily Trust said merit was followed in promoting academic staff.

However, a lecturer said he knew an incident in which a lecturer who was “highly connected” was upgraded when she brought her doctorate degree certificate before attaining the minimum time for promotion, and explained that the incident raised dust at the senate of the university. Another lecturer at the university confided in our reporter that some lecturers who came on transfer from some ministries were given preferential treatment.

FUTA

The Director of Communication of the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Mr. Adegbero Adebanjo, said academic staff could not reasonably be expected to violate due process in appointments and promotions because of the checks and balances in the system.

He said, “The candidate for promotion (lecturer) sends in his publications through his departmental A&PC and if he is found qualified, his documents are presented to the faculty’s A&PC, then to the university’s A&PC. If the committee is satisfied that there is a prima facie case, it shall obtain evidence from external assessors.”

He explained that on the other hand, promotion requests that failed at the departmental A&PC would be rested there and won’t be taken to faculty level.

UDUS

A lecturer at the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto (UDUS), Dr. Mansur Buhari, said there was no short cut to promotion in UDUS. Dr. Buhari said lecturers qualified for promotion were made to face committee upon committee before being promoted. According to him, the university had “very strict rules” which made promotion difficult for its staff.

He said, “You have to face several committees and they must make sure that they scrutinise every piece of information that you have given them.”

Dr. Buhari, a linguistics lecturer, added that, “You will not know who is assessing your papers. So cutting corners for promotion is nearly impossible in this university, but I don’t know for other universities.”

However, at the Sokoto State University, the ASUU Chairman, Dr. Attahiru Sifawa, alleged that there were delays and in some cases denial of promotions.

He said, “Many of our members are due for promotion but are not getting it because even last year’s assessment is not ready, not to talk of this year’s.”

Sifawa, however, ruled out the possibility of getting promotion through dubious ways in the university because of its strict adherence to laws.

Why cut corners?     

Daily Trust reports that while most of the established universities have sufficient number of permanent professors and are not in a hurry to recruit more except in new fields, new universities are struggling to bridge the gap in the rations of their staff to students. The Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Rasheed Abubakar, said the number of professors across universities was a little over 10,000.

Prof. Abubakar said the universities had a total of 67,000 teaching and 250, 000 non-teaching staff, while the population of students was little over two million, with 275,000 graduate students comprising 25, 000 PhD students and 250, 000 master’s students, as well as 1.7 million undergraduates.

The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) has 550,000 students.