Ambrose Alli varsity’s magical graduates

THE Edo State government recently uncovered massive sleaze at the Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma. As it found out, in the last two years, at least 30 students of the school took examinations and graduated from the university while living outside the shores of Nigeria. This ugly phenomenon was highlighted by Mr. Austin Osakue, a member of the Special Intervention Team (SIT) of the university on the occasion of the SIT’s submission of its progress report to Governor Godwin Obaseki at the Government House in Benin City. According to him, these students lived abroad, purportedly wrote examinations, and graduated. Osakue however said that staff members and Heads of Department who were found to be involved in this unholy cover-up had been identified and handed over to the Department of State Services and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) for further investigation and prosecution. This development was only a part of the rot that the team uncovered in the course of its investigation.

While the situation at the AAU may sound confounding, stakeholders in Nigerian education know that worse incidents occur in the country’s institutions of higher learning. While education is supposed to be a rigorous process meant for only serious minds, laggards with enough money to flaunt have found an easy way of eating their cake and having it in the institutions. In perpetrating their scheme, they secure the buy-in of academics and non-academic staff of thin moral stature whose consciences can be purchased for a fee. This has further hobbled the acquisition of thorough learning that could make the students eventually useful to themselves and the nation at large. It is disingenuous to expect the nation to thrive on the basis of fraudulently obtained certificates.

Education is at the core of development and one of the basic prerequisites for the acquisition of certificates is the attendance of classes. When students do not attend lectures but manage to wangle their way into graduation, it casts serious doubts on the quality of their certificates and the knowledge they supposedly gathered in the schools. Due to the critical nature of classes to the quality of knowledge acquired, most universities set 70 percent attendance as the minimum for each student to attain. Several methods are thus employed to ensure that students meet this requirement. Indeed, some institutions clock in and out of classes with with thumb-printing. This is why the Ambrose Alli University scenario is a gross aberration. It points to further rot that may have over the years destroyed the fabric of knowledge acquisition at the institution. The rot may be just as gigantic as the buildings of the institution.

The searchlight of not just the university authorities but the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Ministry of Education should be beamed, not only on the incident or AAU but Nigerian universities, colleges of education, polytechnics and other higher institutions as a whole. The issue of unqualified graduates cannot be characteristic of the Ambrose Alli University alone. It is likely to be a general trend in Nigerian universities. It is a cancerous affliction in the schools. The situation at the AAU  is distressing given what is known about the elaborate processes of a university system in which it ought to be ordinarily difficult to perpetrate fraud given the many layers of checks and balances that make up the system. Evidently, this mess points at a stronger peculiar mess. It suggests that many things are wrong with the university system in Nigeria. Only unimaginable depth of corruption in a system could make it possible to commit this monumental fraud.

Where were all the departmental checks that should normally be in place to ensure that every student was in school to attend lectures before even qualifying to sit examinations? And what of the registration officers who were expected to sign forms only for the students who showed up for registration? What kind of university system would be bereft of all these checks and balances and still call itself one, pretending to churn out quality graduates every year? The AAU revelations  point to the depth of deception and corruption in  universities in Nigeria. The government, the NUC and the leadership of the universities have to recognise the full implications of this obnoxious development and roll out measures  to combat and weed it out immediately. Not addressing this urgently can only signal the final collapse and repudiation of the true notion of the university system in the country.

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