Commentary: New Vice Chancellor Of Unizik – Chance To Be A Hero

WRITTEN BY JUDE ATUPULAZI

By next week, the new Vice Chancellor of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Prof Christopher Esimone, will be assuming duty at the helm of affairs of the institution. He will replace Prof Joseph Ahaneku, who had called the shots for five years. The present status of UNIZIK is due to the efforts of all the Vice Chancellors that had put in their best on the job all these years.

But while the institution is blazing the trail in infrastructure and academic work, it seems, like others, has not been able to extricate itself from one major vice which is currently the scourge of higher institutions in Nigeria – sex-for-marks/sorting syndrome. There is no doubt that this phenomenon is killing education in Nigeria faster than any other thing.

Rational thinkers are worried and bitter about the menace because it seems that, despite all the promises made by various institutions that they will fight the scourge, little or nothing is being done about it. Findings show that some lecturers are having a field day with hapless victims. They extort money from male students to pass them.

For the females, it is as though it has become a crime to look beautiful or pretty. Before now, it used to be a case of unserious female students seducing male lecturers in order to get marks. Now, it does not matter if a female student is serious. Once she is good looking, the lecturers will come after her.

There are instances where randy lecturers have deliberately failed some female students. When such students complain, they are told that their papers were blank. Shortly after, some of her classmates, either working for such lecturers or just giving honest advice, suggest to the poor girls to sleep with the lecturers. Refusing to do so could mean continuously failing the course till the student’s final year. That’s how heartless some of the lecturers can be. This practice has made many students to lose motivation to read, knowing that their efforts do not count. It gets worse when they see unserious students getting high grades just because they are sleeping with lecturers.

It is known that the lecturers who perpetrate this action have formed a cartel through which they work for each other. Thus, even when a student is not offering a course offered by a particular lecturer, she may still be entangled in the web of that lecturer who only has to meet his friend whose course the said girl is doing to indicate interest in the girl.

Apart from the sex demands, there is also what is called sorting. Here, students are required to pay certain amounts to lecturers in order to either pass their courses or be supervised on their projects. Once the students pay, they are assured of not failing those courses, regardless of whether they did poorly in the examination.

It is clear that some lecturers are more interested in the students’ money than in their academic success and that is too bad. Is it then any wonder that many of today’s students are not worth their certificates? Because many of these lecturers are more interested in cutting corners, they are no more focusing on their jobs. In the past, educators were fully focused on making their students better and the results were clear. Today, it is back for ground, marks for paper, and it seems this is being handled with kid gloves.

While it is true that many schools have set up machinery for ”checking” this anomaly and asking affected students to use that opportunity to file their complaints, many students are scared of doing so for fear of victimization. Hence, schools will have to come up with more fool proof methods of having these lecturers exposed so that the students can adequately be protected.

Nothing should be spared in ensuring that this phenomenon is stopped in our schools. Beyond the emotional trauma the students go through, society loses from these acts as those who are supposed to take over the leadership tomorrow are not good enough. This is a very serious issue.

Therefore, as Professor Esimone gets set to mount the saddle as UNIZIK VC, he should try to make history by being the first VC that will totally stamp out this menace from his school. If he succeeds, others will follow suit and despite the opposition he will face from those reaping from that warped system, he will emerge a hero in the eyes of students, parents and the public. It takes courage to do this but it is someone that must press that button.