Time to save our university system

By 

Solomon Etim

The other day it was the University of Ibadan that made news for expelling students discovered to have secured admission with forged credentials. Then came the turn of University of Uyo. Delta State University did not avoid the trail. Now the University of Calabar has joined the band when it published the list of 305 students rusticated on account of inappropriate/fraudulent admissions.

Our collective memories still remind us of the 1970s/80s certificate rackets, which rocked the Nigerian University system. It became clear from that time that the university system had started a thousand-mile odyssey into decadence. Those sympathetic to the system still ruminate over the impact which the negative image of the racket inflicted upon the reputation of a once respected system.

As if to add salt to injury, the World Bank in collaboration with the Nigerian Institute for Social and Economic Research published recently the findings of a commissioned study on the Nigerian University system. The project roundly castigates graduates especially those 'minted' in the post-1990 era as having no steam and academic rigour of what are expected to be the knowledge base of university graduates, the world over.

Some university vice chancellors rose in unison like fire fighters to discredit the findings of the noble report. Yet, the sore has assumed the proportion of an ulcer. The university system keeps on tumbling from one case of fraudulent and irregular admissions of students to another.

I have always believed that the problems in the university system are intricately woven around the quality of those who have found themselves in the system as students. Admit a student with a solid academic history then lecturers would stop exploiting their academic foibles to sell outdated and knowledge-less handouts that flood the four walls of the universities. And awards of unmerited marks by lecturers would be challenged with great success. Such students would be bold enough to contest any perceived ill-treatments that have become the trademarks of irascible university lecturers. It would be possible for such students to draw the lines between what they are sent to the university to do and what they should not be there for. Nobody would manipulate them to meddle in officialdom outside their areas of direct interest to foster the hidden agendas of the manipulators.

We have to devise a new method; a new way of handling the hydra-headed monster called fraudulent and irregular admissions. No student forges admission slip or certificate to gain entry into the Nigerian university system alone or gets admitted with irregular papers unless they are aided by some other established source(s). There is this aphorism: it takes two to tango. Expelling the students alone does not grind the enterprise to a halt. At best the exercise is a complete poppycock. This reminds me of one of the stories my mother once told me when I was six. It was about a stupid village curator who felt that his wife's headache could be treated by just cutting off her head. He never pondered over his thought thus he deprived the woman her precious life. What each Nigerian university does in expelling students on account of fraudulent and irregular admissions is comparable to the stupid village curator story. It pretends to solve the problem when in fact it worsens it beyond redemption.

Here we have opportunities to tackle the rot and the root cause of Nigerian university system's decadence. Here we have been offered the golden chance to see how the input of a system determines to a large extent the output. But have we not thrown away the chance as a prodigal son?

The students are not alone in this sordid act. I want to underscore this point even at the price of being accused of tautology. Let's take the forged papers for instance. It might have been manufactured from the popular 'Oluwole' or other unknown forgery centres in the country. Some people might have designed the format of the documents/certificates. Some may have bought the papers and ink with which the documents were printed. Others may have done the printing or typing. There are others who might have been specialists in signature forgery. A long chain of collaborators certainly would be involved! The students are only the buyers of the forged papers. The money they use in the transaction might have come knowingly from their parents. In that case the parents are accomplices. What happens to all of them? What would we say about parents who know that their children are incapable of profiting from university education but they force them through crooked paths in order to be like the Jones's of the society? How have they induced their wards to commit crimes allied to this forgery/irregularity? Yet each university thinks that it could solve the problem of this monument by just expelling the students caught in the act.

Would it not serve the desired lesson if such students were handed over to the Nigeria Police Force. Would it not sound reasonable to bring these students and the chains of criminals that aid them to book to serve as deterrent to other siblings who may erroneously be led to think that there is no value for hardwork and excellence.