IS IT REQUIEM FOR UNIVERSITY/POLYTECHNIC EDUCATION IN NIGERIA?
Ben Udechukwu
There is a dangerous trend playing out in most universities and polytechnics across Nigeria. It is very unhealthy. This trend threatens to annihilate what is remaining of our higher education from the entire surface of the earth. Literally, we may not have anything called education soon, if this trend is not halted. Whose idea was it that semesters now run for two months? What this means is that most universities and polytechnics teach for about one month and use the remaining one month to write exams. Ordinarily, a semester is designed to run for seventeen to eighteen weeks. We have approximately nine calendar months that make up one academic year. How did we change this time honoured standard to suit our culture of balkanisation of everything?
BENUDECHUKWU.COM had visited select public schools across the federation. The story is the same at least since post COVID lockdown. It is yet to be seen any public University or Polytechnic within the Southsrn Nigeria that is not guilty of this embarrassing anomaly. Below is what we obtained from the Registry of Federal Polytechnic, Nekede
First Semester:
Saturday 24 July 2021 students arrive, Monday 26 July lectures begin, Wednesday 11 August 2021 orientation, Saturday 14 August 2021 matriculation, Sunday 12 September 2021 lectures End, Monday 13 September 2021 Exams begin
Sunday 10 October 2021 Exams End.
Second semester
Monday 11 October 2021 lectures begin, Wednesday 10 students week begin, Sunday 14 November 2021 students week Ends, Monday 20 December lectures End, Wednesday 12 January Exams begin, Friday 28 January Exams End
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The calendar above from Federal Polytechnic Nekede is obviously a fair representation of what is obtainable in most public tertiary institutions across the country. Students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK) Awka wrote first semester exams of the 2020/2021 session in November. In February 2022, barely two months in between, they are set to write their second semester exams. Rivers State Polytechnic, Bori did a semester from December 2020 to March 2021. Yes, they got all the lectures, practicals and studies done in eight weeks as against eighteen weeks. Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO) started the 2020/2021 session in September 2021. They wrote first semester in November 2021 and started a new semester immediately. FUTO is billed to end the second semester in February. From Abia State University to University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) down to Cross River University of Technology (CRUTECH). the story is the same.
What this means is that cumulatively, they used twernty weeks to conclude a session. Regrettably, undergraduates of these institutions are either severely cheated or gravely shortchanged. They are further made unemployable as there is absolutely no way one would get full exposure in eight weeks for what was designed for eighteen weeks. This trend is hurting our academic system and making a nonsense of tertiary education. These products are denied the princely oven of academic process thus giving us Doctors that increase mortality rates, Lawyers that send innocent people to prison, nurses that take lives instead of saving them, accountants that cannot add numbers, radiographers that Google to perform the minutest task, architects that design buildings to collapse, engineers that are no better than technicians, computer scientists with the thinking power of a rock and the list continues without end. For our tertiary education, it is academic nunc dimitis or perhaps a requiem.
BENUDECHUKWU.COM can authoritatively reveal that the most dominant factor influencing these institutions to “rush” students is FUNDING. Nearly all public universities and polytechnics in Nigeria are embarrassingly under – funded. These institutions depend on school and other fees from students to run and be afloat. It is therefore not in the interest of these schools that students stay the prerequisite number of weeks. Otherwise, what would warrant starting a semester in July and end same in September? These institutions go dead broke when they are not collecting fees from students.
When COVID 19 struck in later part of 2019 and mostly early 2020, it exposed the inadequacies of our educational system. It reminded us that we were running an analogue system of education. These institutions showed lack of capacity to learn outside of physical classrooms. They did not have the resources to run virtual classes. When they did; the students had millions of impediments to grapple with; chief among them was erratic power supply.
Further investigations by BENUDECHUKWU.COM reveal that what these Nigerian tertiary institutions are trying to do, is to behave like COVID 19 that caused big football events to be cancelled, that stood the whole world still, never happened. This is the unfortunate reason our universities and polytechnics did not see anything wrong with doing two school years in one year. If you doubt, find out if 2020 that saw all of us sit- at – home has not been erased from the calendar of doom. This is February 2022, nearly all these institutions are done with 2019, 2020 and 2021 school years. How? How did we make up for the one year we lost? How did ww Make up in an economy where online study is almost 0%?
This is a passionate appeal for us to arrest this dangerous trend. It is hurting the system and widening the gap between products of our universities and their counterparts elsewhere. You don’t want to have the unique but nauseating experience of interacting with some of these graduates.
We are afraid that unless the pattern of funding of these universities and polytechnics changes, to make them less dependent on paltry fees paid by students, it will be a story of grass to grass. The ivory tower is the pride of humanity and cannot be subjected to this kind of harrowing experience where a Medical student for instance would be a beneficiary of arrogance of failure.
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