But the negative effect of this syndrome does not end there. Some unscrupulous lecturers view the growing desperation for first-class and/or second-class upper degrees as a means to make a quick buck. These lecturers, aware of the desperate “gold rush” for first-class and second-class upper degrees cash in on the vulnerability of their students. Being of no moral wealth, they demand for money from these students and offer to add extra marks in tests and exams for interested students. But this does not stop here; they also make use of their influence as lecturers to float the CGPA's of these desperate students through their fellow lecturers and friends working in the examination department. These already desperate students in turn feel a deep sense of gratitude towards these lecturers as they gladly go to any length to raise the amounts of money demanded. In some instances, even parents have been known to provide their wards with the money to pay off these corrupt lecturers.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, is the popular saying. The measures which students take just to graduate with grades above second-class are ingenious, risky and ultimately destructive. Hence, there is a recorded increase today in the rate at which students go out of their way just to cheat in tests and examinations as well. Some foolhardy ones personally sneak in strips of paper with answers written front to back in ever so tiny print. These strips are popularly called, “chukuli”, “chokes”, “microfilm” and all manner of names. Some of these students in their desperation even go as far as walking into an examination with concealed, full sized handouts!!
Other more upgraded methods are the use of mobile phones popularly called GSM. These students record concise portions of their handouts and notes so as to access them during examinations. Others buy phone credit for someone placed out side. Using a hands free mouthpiece, they communicate the questions to the person who is out side armed with a handout; he seeks out the answers for them and transmits it back. While others make use of blue tooth devices to cheat, some cheat through arranged and bribed invigilators. In certain cases, even friends take the place of another and write the examination in their stead. The list goes on and on.
An even more reprehensible effect of this “desperate gold rush” is the trade in female student flesh. The situation where these shameless lecturers actually equate the dignity of their female students to their sexual desires, fantasies and urge. The demand commonly known as “sex for marks,” is a common trend which is practiced by lecturers of all sorts, ignorant and young, short and tall, dark and fair skinned, fat and slim, knowledgeable and ignorant, assistant lecturers and professors, etc. Unfortunately, the pressure on graduates with grades below second-class compels some of these female students to succumb to the whims and demands of these lecturers. There are even rumors of cases where lecturers have demanded from and even slept with the daughters of fellow colleagues.
The Solutions
Solutions have been proffered. They must begin from the government's timely intervention. To start with, the government must look into the general falling standards of education in Nigeria. Objective Nigerians can testify that the standard of education in the country is presently careening dangerously down a very steep valley. What was, twenty years ago cannot be obtained today and the higher educational institutions are the worse for wear.
Government intervention should further translate into more job opportunities. But in truth, this would be trying to build a house from the roof. The state of the higher institutions in Nigeria today, especially the first generation universities, is a disheartening sight. The library shelves are stacked with texts and journals that could be dated as far back as Nigeria's colonial days! The more recent ones are too expensive for students to afford and that is even if they are readily available for them to buy. While some have their pages torn out and are not replaced, others are hidden away in the reserve sections. These texts and journals in the reserve sections are equally not enough to serve the large number of students waiting in line just to make reference to them for assignments, project research and a whole lot of other academic purposes.
Another fact is that the already existing courses in Nigerian institutions need to be over hauled while out dated ones should be scrapped. Further more, new courses need to be introduced in these institutions, which are decades behind today's fast paced world. It may be a dream, but a realizable one that one day, Nigeria's institutions may be ranked amongst Africa's - if not the worlds, elite institutions.
The authorities in these institutions should provide a platform for fair hearing. This platform should be such that it can function retrospectively. Students who can prove that they are suffering and have suffered from the unexplained phenomenon of missing scripts, from lecturers intimidation, victimization, tribalism, extortion, religious sentiments, sexual harassment and unfair marking should be heard. Justice should be meted out to these lecturers accordingly.
The examination department should be administered independently from other administrative departments. It should also be put in the charge of well-trained and qualified personnel. It is just too shameful for words to say that some personnel in Nigerian institutions working in the examination departments barely know the basics of computer operation. Yet, these computer illiterates are the ones who decide the fate of thousands and thousands of students Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA). Students are thus doomed from the onset as it is guaranteed that there will be miscalculated CGPA'S and all sort of incompetent oversight. Added to this is the fact that these personnel and officers in the examination department are either the very same corrupt and morally bankrupt lecturers or their friends.
Most of all, graduates seeking for employment in corporations/organizations, be them government or privately owned, should be treated equally and be given equal opportunities to prove their worth. The unfair and ill-advised act of degree segregation and the marginalization of graduates below second-class must be stopped. This can best be done starting from the government corporations/organizations and gradually working up to the private sector. To remain apathetic about this is to allow the so-called first-class and second-class upper degree holders the opportunities that the other classes of graduates equally deserve. In reality, those above second-class may just be robots of an “encyclopedic educational system of information cramming and memory testing," leaving no room for individualism, innovation and imaginative initiation taking.
The Audu Chima Bankoles of the Nigerian unemployed league may not have passed out with first-class or second-class (upper) degrees. They may not have been rotten enough or been compromised enough to buy, in cash or in kind, these fancied class of degrees from their universities or their polytechnics. They may even not have been good and sufficiently skilled in cramming and regurgitating verbatim the turgid and invariably outdated stuff dished out to them by their lazy lecturers. But in the harsh challenges of life and the work place, they very well turn out to be the first-class materials that their universities denied them. We should give them the chance they deserve.
