CITADELS OF PRIMITIVE CORRUPTION
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Bunmi fatoye-matory
Dec 4, 2024, 11:20:41 AM12/4/24
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On Postgraduate Courses and Thesis Defence in Nigerian Universities - A thread:
"We had to pay hotel bills for the members of the panel. You could also offer sex, if your supervisor is the devil's apprentice. Transport money inclusive."
- Erdoo N.
"I decided I'd never have anything else to do with Nigerian universities, the day I saw people defending their masters dissertation presenting coolers of rice, garden eggs and crates of drinks to their supervisors. I thought someone was getting married."
- Bibian U.
"We were told we'd pay 60k each, for both entertainment and logistics of external supervisor."
-Chiamaka O.
"We spent the night prior to my mother's defense at the University of Ilorin, cooking coolers of rice with assorted meat for the lecturers."
- Omekagu.
We fed the whole department.
Paid a prior fee of 2k.
Still gave supervisor gift. This same supervisor then came on one of my Facebook posts to say how I'm too opinionated to get married. I blocked him for my peace of mind. I don't have strength."
- Sylvia E.
"My husband was so frustrated by his Uniuyo supervisor for this, that he abandoned his MBA and finally got it from a UK university without any sort of bribery."
- Uche N.
"In ESUT, students have to buy brand new suits for their supervisors."
- Udeh O.
"Envelopes filled with money. Hotel bills. Payment to the school. External supervisor's fee. The mental stress.
Ah! The only reason I'm still doing it is because I've come too far to stop. After Master's, I'll never do anything school in this country again. Never!"
- Bello A.
"Some departments will even provide you with a menu and list of people you'll feed on the day of your thesis defense.
I nearly wept for my friend, when one non-teaching staff started dragging her because meat had finished."
- Esther A.
"Ordinary B.Sc project I defended, my supervisor collected a bag of rice. On the defense day, we went to an eatery and bought food and drinks for all the supervisors in the hall."
- Harrison P.
"The money I spent on my supervisor was enough to buy a piece of land in GRA.
-A bottle of special nonalcoholic wine and MTN airtime worth 1.5k for "consultation" before he approved my topic.
-Two months DSTV premium subscription...
-N5000 for every chapter I took to him for vetting. Except Chapter 4 - he made me pay 20k for it because, "all my project students know I do it better."
-The day of defence, we(a group of about 15 students) paid 2k each for food and transport fare."
-Odichi R.
"We paid 40k each for 'refreshment' and 'honorarium' during internal defence. We are also going to replicate that amount, if not more, during external defence."
- Ịhụnanya A.
"For BSc project defense we contributed money to feed the supervisors."
-Oreva E.
"My project topic was originally on aquatic snails.
My supervisor said I should bring some snails to his house, not even the aquatic snails that I was supposed to be working on. I bought half a bag of land snails for him.
A week later, he changed my topic to Catfish and demanded that I buy some catfish and bring them to his house for inspection. I had to do it. I wish he'd asked for rice and drinks, like my colleagues were asked. I would have spent less money."
- Ruth D.
"The best thing I ever did for my life and mental health was to abandon my Masters program halfway. My blood pressure was always high. They killed my zeal to study and do research. Nigerian universities? God forbid!"
- Ene P.
"I abandoned my Masters program because my supervisor wanted to have sex with me. I told him I'm a married woman. He said and I quote, "That's even better! I like them married. If anything happens, we'll both keep our mouths shut." No one listened to my report.
- Annie U.
“And Postgraduate students do multiple defenses - proposal, internal and faculty defense, then the very almighty external defense. Multiple seminars too
And refreshment is served in ALL
I swear, MSc/PHD in Nigeria was the most challenging thing I've done in my life so far”
Please share among your contacts and groups to bring sanity into higher Institutions in our country.
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Dec 4, 2024, 12:36:38 PM12/4/24
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I dont know what to say
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Victor Okafor
Dec 4, 2024, 1:43:00 PM12/4/24
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While the statements/claims reflect both a huge betrayal of the norms of academic decency and unacceptable exploitations of vulnerable students, I submit that it's unfair to publish them in a manner that effectively tarnishes the image of all Nigerian universities. Is it not necessary to publish them in a manner that simultaneously identifies the culpable institutions? Such an approach could help the leadership of the affected universities to institute appropriate investigations to locate and discipline the culpable faculty members.
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Sincerely,
Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.
Professor and Head
Department of Africology and African American Studies
Eastern Michigan University
Email: vok...@emich.edu
Tel: 734.487.9594
Food for Thought:
“The ultimate measure of a man [or, a woman] is not where he [or, she] stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he [or, she] stands at times of challenge and controversy.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Moses Ochonu
Dec 4, 2024, 1:43:00 PM12/4/24
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Toyin Adepoju,
You don’t know what to say? How about “these stories are made up and are designed to smear Nigerian lecturers”? Remember when I would highlight these damning ethical problems and you would accuse me of magnifying a few isolated cases and exaggerating to smear Nigeria-based colleagues? And I would laugh privately and say to myself: this interlocutor has no idea how deep the rot is in our higher education system.
Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 4, 2024, at 11:36 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Dec 4, 2024, 1:43:01 PM12/4/24
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Perfidy!
Truth is truer than fiction and of course better than any chicken-shit “poetry” written in Latin or Pidgin.
The writing's on the wall, come read it, come see what it say
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Dec 5, 2024, 1:57:41 AM12/5/24
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Moses,
One does not have to speak at all times as you are insisting in doing in engaging Adepoju on this subject.
Did any of my interventions suggest stories were being made up?
I saw your attitude as lacking in nuance and as steeped in your possibly painful undergraduate experience which was different from mine as most of my lecturers were self sacrificing and dedicated, examples demonstrated by essays I have written about them on this platform.
The challenges emerged in the graduate program and I also described those on this platform.
When I did that you also rose and accused me of having earlier engaged in deception and I corrected you by stating that I was giving a balanced presentation of my experience.
I therefore gave a rounded view of my encounter with the Nigerian university system, the positive and the negative, a dialectic I expect still exists, though I would not know to what ratio.
Its the dismissive, totalistically condemnatory stance I disagree with.
Thanks
Toyin
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Obinna .
Dec 5, 2024, 1:57:41 AM12/5/24
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Leadership of the affected universities are very much aware and some of them participated in these practices while moving up in their careers
These violations of norms are done quite openly and are very widespread.
These violations of norms are done quite openly and are very widespread.
From: 'Victor Okafor' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
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Cc: Bunmi fatoye-matory <bun...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - CITADELS OF PRIMITIVE CORRUPTION
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Mr. E. B. Jaiyeoba
Dec 5, 2024, 1:57:49 AM12/5/24
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I totally agree with Dr Victor Okafor, it is unfair and mischievous to publish these statements without proper contextual information including institutions where it happened.
It does not happen in my department in OAU, Ile-Ife. I just do not want to generalise for my University but it can rarely happen in Ile-Ife without any backlash. I mean, publishing this kind of text is making nonsense of our sacrifices in totally dehumanising conditions of service! It is the same university system that produces high flying graduate students when the students are exposed to good infrastructure and research facilities in Universities outside Nigeria!!
Please, if these statements are not contextualised, then, the people recognising them have ulterior motives, my submission!!!
Babatunde JAIYEOBA
E. Babatunde JAIYEOBA PhD
Professor of Architecture
Department of Architecture
Faculty of Environmental Design and Management
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
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Toyin Falola
Dec 5, 2024, 8:21:08 AM12/5/24
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A small question:
Can educational institutions be shielded from cultural drift, political decadence, and economic decline?
The examples cited are cases of moral degradation. This will continue, unfortunately.
Conflicts located in reforms is the starting point: internal ruptures, insurgent rebellions, covert actions. Put poison in jollof rice!
TF
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Biko Agozino
Dec 5, 2024, 12:36:45 PM12/5/24
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All universities ask for donations all the time, except Nigerian universities apparently. They should all establish University Foundations to actively chase their alumni and corporations for endowments to support their mission and vision. The government alone is not expected to provide all the funds for higher education even with the TETFund from corporate taxes.
I have never been asked by the University of Calabar for a donation but Cambridge University and Edinburgh University keep asking me to chip in something every year. Those of you appalled that some hungry lecturers are demanding for jollof rice and drinks from students should ask yourselves how much you have voluntarily contributed to you alma maters?
I agree with Oga Victor that the sensational anonymous quotes from a biased sample cannot be accepted as being representative of Nigerian students' experience in graduate schools. It is curious that the propagandists did not find anything good about graduate school supervisors to say by any student. Our dedicated colleagues sometimes teach graduate classes of over 1000 students. Can you imagine that?
I believe that academic achievement is often bell shaped in a population distribution. There are those who excel, there are those who are average, and there are those who struggle. Students evaluations indicate that disgruntled students are more motivated to accuse their professors of wrongdoing than high achieving students. This was explained by bell hooks with the view that critical thinking is a painful thing to learn.
One thing that graduate students could learn in Nigeria is to use their critical thinking to oppose any unethical conduct by any lecturer or department. They should go on strike and demonstrate for better service but they appear to be cowards, hiding behind anonymity to hide the fact that many of them have no intention of learning anything new in graduate school.
Biko
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Toyin Falola
Dec 5, 2024, 12:44:59 PM12/5/24
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Great one:
Why lump two issues: donations and transgressions? With due respect they can be decoupled.
The argument by Moses is that the samples are bigger. He has been consistent.
The other argument is the sample should not taint the careers of innocent ones.
TF
From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2024 6:15:43 PM
Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2024 6:15:43 PM
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Dec 5, 2024, 1:18:02 PM12/5/24
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Biko's last paragraph is deeply problematic.
It is not sensitive to the overwhelming power of hierarchical seniority in an academic system like that of Nigeria.
In such situations as described in the quotes above, what is being described is a department wide culture, not the behaviour of isolated people.
Even when the negativity comes from one person, getting justice against that person could be a painfully difficult and perhaps impossible process.
As for the sources of the statements given above, its not factual that they are necessarily driven by inadequate students.
I have heard such reports from quarters different from those of students who are inadequate.
The situation is very problematic, from information ive been getting.
One should hear from students first hand.
Also, lecturers tasking students for food and other subsistence items. particularly since those students are not likely to have regular incomes like themselves, is mean and despicable.
If you think your job is inadequate, leave it and get another or do another job in addition.
My lecturers at the University of Benin between them opended a barber shop, a butchers shop and sold in a kiosk. I used to use my car as a taxi at a time.
The students are struggling. You the lecturer should struggle in your own way not punish students who are not forcing you to remain an academic.
My striving to achieve balance in my assessment should not be taken to mean im waffling between positions.
I want to see and acknowledge all shades of the spectrum.
Thanks
Toyin
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Patrick Effiboley
Dec 6, 2024, 2:05:16 AM12/6/24
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These kind of un-contextualised quotes negativ-ise our collective efforts in high education institutions in Africa.
They are also un-productive since the said universities are not known and their leaders could not feel concerned in tackling the problems.
In the same time, most of our universities are under-funded. This is where the problems start.
What our African governments did with the suggestion of UNESCO and the likes who advised in 2015 that African countries invest at least 1% of their GDP (in French, PNB) in the research sector? ...
Dr Emery Patrick EFFIBOLEY
Maître de conférences, Histoire de l'Art
Chef, Département d'Histoire et d'Archéologie, Université d'Abomey-Calavi, Bénin
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Wits University, RSA,(2014-2016)
Moses Ebe Ochonu
Dec 6, 2024, 2:05:16 AM12/6/24
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Typical Nigerian stuff: if it hasn't happened to me then it is not happening. Also typical Nigerian obscurantism and diversionary tactics: unless the complainants supply all their personal details and the details of where and who did these things to them, we will not believe them. So you want the courageous whistleblowers/victims to say "My name is Gbemisola Adesanya, I was a graduate student of Architecture in OAU, graduating in 2023 and Professor Jayeoba was my graduate supervisor and he did this and that to me." Or "my name is Chinwe Okonkwo, currently a graduate student of History at UNN and my supervisor is Professor Chimaroke Osuji and he ...." So that you and your vengeful
colleagues can identify them and retaliate against them or smear them. You think say dem be mumu?
Our young people who are being victimized, brutalized, and extorted by predators and abusers with PhDs are crying out for help and we're gaslighting them, blaming them for what's happening to them, calling them dumb and unserious students, calling cowards for not marching to protest but instead anonymously airing their grievances, as if we no longer know what happens to people in our country to outspoken and protesting victims who are in asymmetrical power relationships and dynamics and are vulnerable to severe retaliation and harm.
Shame on our generation for preying on our young people and the mocking and gaslighting them when they cry out for help.
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Dec 6, 2024, 4:53:04 AM12/6/24
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Ochonu is correct in arguing that the people crying out are taking safety in anonymity.
Asymmetrical power relationships, as he rightly puts it, are core here.
I have not experienced the worst of such negative situations but I have experienced enough as a graduate student and entry level academic in a Nigerian university to know that daring to put one's name to such whistleblowing may be equivalent to academic suicide at the hands of the cabal culture that is prevalent when the rule of law transcending individual interests is not in place.
If you want to read people opening up and identifying themselves as they make these allegations, go to social media such as Facebook, particularly in groups dedicated to particular departments and graduating classes, as I have observed.
The problem has nothing to do with funding.
Lecturers cant be so impoverished they are relying on students for food.
If such things are really done, its simply a way of taking advantage of vulnerable people under one's care.
The Nigerian university is involved in an identity metamorphosis.
Such "gifts to the elders" are a staple in traditional Nigerian cultures, as in situations in which one is seeking knowledge.
Those who do field work in such contexts can attest to that.
So, lecturers asking students to provide monies or goods in the name of academic advancement may be seen as simply devolving to traditional African styles of relationship between the seeker and the knowledge holder.
The question is- is this approach valid in a university which is centred on a different model of relationships between seekers and teachers?
The university model is based on disinterested relationships between what is being learnt and those who teach it. Critical interaction with knowledge is central.
How can you be adequately critical if the person whose knowledge production you are critiquing is providing you with food and money?
Another aspect of the ongoing Africanisation of the Nigerian university is the tribalisation of the system fast gaining momentum, in line with the already well entrenched tribalisation of Nigerian politics.
The venerable University of Ibadan signalled the scope of this development when some of its professors demanded the next VC must be an Ibadan person, since no Ibadan person had ever been VC even though the university is located in Ibadan. They got their wish, I understand.
The people of Benin engaged a similar struggle in connection with the University of Benin three Vice Chancellors ago, insisting the next VC must be a Benin person since a Benin person had never been VC there even though the university is located on their soil.
Traditional authorities and even the dreaded Benin deity Ayelala were invoked into the struggle, a portable shrine to the deity being placed at the university's main gate to press home their demands, which were eventually granted, and as of today, the University is having three Benin VCs in a row. Is the Uniben VCship now the preserve of Benin people as one account claims is the norm for becoming a principal in a secondary school in Benin City?
How helpful is such a stance for staff morale, staff discipline and for attracting the best minds, in keeping with the aspiration to universally valid knowledge at the core of the ideal of the university as developed in the West fron where it was imported into Nigeria?
Our universities need to define for themselves what it means to be a Nigerian and an African university with each institution working out the specifics of this for itself.
Thanks
Toyin
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Moses Ebe Ochonu
Dec 6, 2024, 1:00:38 PM12/6/24
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Toyin Adepoju,
Time indeed reveals and vindicates all things. I'm shaking my head reading what you're writing and still can't believe it. That's because I remember the days when I was highlighting these issues and you all but implied that I was exaggerating or even perhaps making up some of the stories to smear Nigerian colleagues and even took it upon yourself to call on them to challenge the scandalous facts I was reeling out about the ethical rot in the Nigerian university system. You would always dismiss or diminish what I was highlighting by saying that this was my experience and mine alone and that I should not generalize it to other people.
Even when I told you that these were mostly stories of what happened to other people that were told to me and that I verified or corroborated, or that I witnessed, you'd still maintain your stance. I even took the step of revealing that some of the stories I was sharing came from lecturers in the system who confided in me about these issues but understandably were afraid to critique them privately or publicly. You never budged from your position that I must have something against ASUU. I would always lay in wait, hoping that our colleagues back home would heed your call and challenge the cases I was sharing so that I would reveal even more, but they almost never did and often resorted to emotive non-sequiturs and ad hominem attacks.
Well, I don't want to relitigate the past. The important thing to note is that I'm heartened by your current stance. You have acquainted yourself with the depth of the problem, taking time to go to student and department alumni forums on social media to learn about the scope and ubiquity of the abuses. It demonstrates an open mind, a mind willing to follow the facts and the evidence and to formulate and change his thought and position accordingly.
You have even gone further than I've done in validating and amplifying the stories and cries of the victims of these institutional and individual predatory behaviors. At this rate, I think I will retire and leave this advocacy in your safe and capable hands :)
Another thing I love about your last post is its courageous decoupling of funding and the abuses that the student testimonials document. For decades inadequate funding, a legitimate issue, has been ASUU's and Nigerian colleagues' all-purpose alibi for egregious ethical violations and teaching and research malpractices. I have always critiqued this approach and argued for a recognition that these are separate issues. Thank you for unequivocally echoing that point in your submission.
Are our colleagues in Nigeria underpaid? Absolutely! It is criminal to pay professors the equivalent of less than $300 in today's Nigeria. Even with this abysmally low salary, some institutions owe backlogs of several months. My friend just got off the phone with his niece who is a professor at UniPort and she said they're owed several months salary arears. This is acceptable, but it is no excuse to extort and abuse students. Are universities underfunded? Heck yes, although this is a more complicated matter having to do with dwindling state resources, growing population, higher enrollment, corruption, etc--all of which requires holistic, radical solutions that are going to involve multiple streams of funding beyond the one provided by the state.
As you eloquently stated in your penultimate intervention, poor salaries and poor funding do not justify sexual or financial predation, and exploiting students to make up for the deficits left by the state is sadism which, as you stated, compromises the process of evaluating graduate work and assigning grades and feedback.
On the issue of the provincialization of university VCship, this is a regulatory issue for which the NUC is squarely to blame. On this issue, if it was up to ASUU, things would be done differently because they've been fighting this politicization and ethnicization of university leadership for years.
Aside from the ethical issues, one of the biggest problems of the Nigerian university system is inbreeding, incestuousness, and the creation of tribal knowledge silos. There are departments in Nigerian public universities where 95 percent of the faculty were trained in the same department. There are others in which 100 percent of the faculty members come from the town, region, or ethnic zone in which the university is located.
What stops the NUC from issuing new policies and guidelines to mandate ethnic, regional, and even religious diversity within the faculty of each department or school?
What stops them from requiring that a university cannot have two successive VCs come from the state of location or even the catchment area? How about even experimenting with a mandate requiring the appointment of non-indigent VCs for federal universities to encourage intellectual diversity, breadth, and scope and to prevent the corrosive impact of ethnic, religious, and regional capture of universities?
How about requiring that, for state universities, successive VCs cannot come from the same ethnic group or senatorial zone?
These are low-hanging fruits of policy and regulation that would easily solve the problem you highlighted for UI and UniBen, which is prevalent all over the country in both federal and state-owned universities. But as usual, the NUC leadership is sleeping and is swallowed up in bureaucratic inertia.
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Biko Agozino
Dec 6, 2024, 1:00:47 PM12/6/24
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Ojugo Kikiwin, I know that you have been donating so much to Nigerian universities that we should change your name to Donatus. Your namesake, Oluwatoyin is right that the culture of feudalism and gerontocracy and the primitive accumulation of phantom corrupt public officials may be encouraging the bootlicking gifts for Almajeri lecturers. However, I believe that the students can improve their critical thinking by collectively challenging feudalism in universities. It is a crying shame that some see open opposition to injustice as tantamount to class suicide.
I agree with the Black Moses that old Pharaoh should let my people go. We do not doubt the allegations by the students but social science research methodology frowns upon sensational snow-ball sampling methods that do not reflect the full spread of opinions from the general population of students.Historians may use such records as original sources but sociologists would be critical of such archive malaria or what Derrida diagnosed as archive fever. One such allegation is bad enough but I hope that there are still many students with gratitude for the learning they gained in Nigerian universities.
Let the universities set up their Foundations for fund-raising to enable those of us who want to donate l;ike Donatus to do so in support of our alma maters.
Biko
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Mr. E. B. Jaiyeoba
Dec 8, 2024, 8:51:00 AM12/8/24
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Prof. Ochonu,
I stand by my argument. The minimum the complainants should do is to mention institutions and departments, they do not have to mention their names!!
Please, if as a historian you depend only on qualitative studies , let's have quantitative studies by social scientists!!
You cannot tarnish the image of the majority by your minority sample!!
Imagine that this allegation is coming at a time when every Babatunde JAIYEOBA, Salisu or Chuckwuali, Ejenobor..... cannot send their children overseas for graduate studies or are withdrawing them back to Nigerian universities because of the exchange rate. In fact, we can accuse you of other things.......
I object to these generalised scandalous uncontextualized statements as a critical basis for Nigerian universities!!!!
Thank you.
Babatunde JAIYEOBA
E. Babatunde JAIYEOBA PhD
Professor of Architecture
Department of Architecture
Faculty of Environmental Design and Management
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Dec 8, 2024, 9:13:06 AM12/8/24
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Thanks Moses.
There is no way I could have stated or believed that you were making up stories about Nigerian universities.
What would you gain from that?
Were any of the situations you described new to me?
I doubt it.
What I recall being deeply uncomfortable about was what I might have seen as a redwashing- my neologism- of Nigerian academia, in terms that had no space to acknowledge its complexities.
The following claim from you. for example, cannot be true of ASUU:
" For decades inadequate funding, a legitimate issue, has been ASUU's and Nigerian colleagues' all-purpose alibi for egregious ethical violations and teaching and research malpractices."
If you can prove the factuality of that view in relation to ASUU, of justifying ethical violations and teaching and research malpractices as necessarily arising from inadequate funding, I would like to see it.
I have also not encountered such thinking as the default mentality of Nigerian academics.
Im also not reading any academic in Nigerian university making such claims on this thread.
Thanks
Toyin
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