Academic bullying in Nigerian universities

WORKPLACE bullying refers to repeated, unreasonable actions of individuals (or a group) that are targeted at an employee (or a group of employees) with an intent to intimidate, degrade, offend, or humiliate the target. The fundamental concept is that of a strong person acting harshly towards someone weaker, and the bullying is blatant and repeated. If you, or someone at your workplace, participates in unwarranted or invalid criticism, blame without factual justification, exclusion or social isolation, swearing, cursing, threatening or any form of verbal abuse, or excessive monitoring against another employee, you are guilty of workplace bullying. An obvious bully is that noisy, nasty, overly aggressive individual who blatantly attempts to foist his/her will on others. Resist him and he attacks like an ill-bred pit bull. In academia, this simple, stupid version of bullying is the exception as they get themselves fired eventually.  The typical academic bully rarely fits the obvious bully stereotype. S/he deploys subtle methods disguised with all the right behaviours. On the surface, bullies appear religious, morally upright, and friendly. This is the trade of their treachery.

They earn the trust and respect of people and then quietly betray them whenever necessary, and often repeatedly, to advance their personal ambitions. For the typical academic bully, the ends always justify the means. No one is the wiser except their victims. Beware of the highly skilled academic bully. S/he has an appearance of success – widely published, has good business acumen, publicly honored as an example of leadership, and regarded as highly intellectual. The highly skilled academic bully is never aggressive but employs subtle tactics of deceit, distortion, misrepresentation and misdirection of facts, and intellectual grandstanding to have their way. This is how they established their fiefdoms. Such a person appears to support you one day, then undermines you the next. They go to great lengths to entice employees to fabricate complaints about colleagues with promises of appointment or threats of exclusion. S/he resists attempts to have a normal, mutually respectful working relationship with certain individuals/groups. The highly skilled bully suffers from insecurity and has not been properly socialized. Whether the obvious, typical, or highly skilled stereotype, the bullying culture has reached epidemic proportions in Nigerian public universities.  Bullying becomes institutionalised when it is ignored or downplayed by workplace leaders who justify the acts as a reasonable action from senior colleagues. Many bullying situations involve senior academics bullying their younger colleagues. This is passed down through progenies who also bully their peers. The traditional African values of respect for elders inadvertently cultivates a higher than average chance of fostering toxic, less innovative and unproductive environments at our universities. Universities should be the embodiment of a respectful workplace culture that enhances transformative thinking and innovation. Yet, a pattern of horrendous, Orwellian elimination rituals, often hidden from the public, is rampant among academics.

Mean, nasty, harsh, underhanded, passive aggressive behaviours are used to victimize all ranks of graduate students and academics. More universities should develop anti-bullying organisational policies that promote conflict resolution, constructive feedback and create win-win situations for students, faculty, academia, and society at large. Failure to address workplace bullying in higher education institutions will undermine their research and knowledge creation roles. It leads to a breakdown of working relationships and violates the fundamental human rights of the victims and breeds toxic people and a toxic workplace. If a senior academic has genuine concern for the well-being of a colleague, s/he may attempt to influence certain behaviours for their good. Sometimes, senior academics overreact to stressful situations by yelling at juniors out of frustration. These isolated events point to a lack emotional maturity and may be reasonable if considered within context. Working under a tough or demanding supervisor is not necessarily bullying and the occasional scolding does not prove bullying. If the primary motivation for setting lofty expectations is to obtain the best performance, one can usually cultivate a good relationship with most people.

In contrast, the academic bully has self-serving goals. They exhibit a complete lack of consideration for others who are considered moral or intellectual inferiors. The academic bully takes liberty to use any means necessary to gain compliance and will perpetually allow trivial matters to fester. Academic bullying is so silent that there is no research or documented reports of it from Nigeria. If going to work feels like an ordeal or you feel helpless against the ravaging incursions of a colleague, you are living in a bullying culture. Accounts from the United States and the United Kingdom are some of the only ways to establish that an academic bullying culture exists. Increased risk of bullying behaviour has been associated with organisational change, older age of workers, inadequate information communication between organisational levels, staff shortages, role ambiguity, role conflict and lack of policies about behaviour. Promising academics can avoid becoming part of an abusive department or the bullying culture. No one, no matter the circumstances, deserves to be humiliated, undermined, insulted, ganged up on or even spoken to harshly. Sadly, the silence of many university administrations appears to be strengthening the bullying culture. Spectators are comfortable watching from the sidelines, “all that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men/women do nothing” (Edmund Burke). If you have experienced it, please be comforted that you did not cause it to happen, and you are not alone.

• Adegboyega, academic consultant and university lecturer, writes in from Lagos.

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