‘OAU management’s conduct of ‘illegal exam’ will erode quality of degrees’

How do you and ASUU OAU view the decision of the university management to conduct examinations despite the ongoing nationwide strike of the union?

Our view as a union and a branch of ASUU is that in totality, the 2017/2018 Rain Semester examination runs afoul of all rules and regulations guiding the conduct of examinations in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. The university administration has woefully failed to abide by examination regulations, an action that has rendered all examinations conducted null and void. My sincere hope is that the university administration will not attempt, using the instrumentality of the necessary committees of the university, to validate this illegality.

 

Are members of the union aggrieved that the university administration reallocated courses to be taught by lecturers on strike to those not on strike?

No, we are not aggrieved! We are only bothered that the quality of teaching these students received before their examination was below standard. You see, in OAU, courses are allocated at the beginning of the semester by each department based on areas of expertise and experience. What becomes of the students who missed out on those expertise and experience when they get to the field? We are also worried by the irregularities and impunity with which the reallocation of courses was done. I can’t imagine that in this university, a Part 4 course would be reallocated to a Graduate Assistant. And like I pointed out before, courses were reallocated to lecturers who do not have the requisite specialisation to teach such courses. Courses were reallocated to lecturers who were just recruited less than three months ago, when they ought to be learning. Courses are still being reallocated while examinations are ongoing, and such lecturers are conducting lectures and examinations simultaneously. The horrible part is that lectures now hold on Saturdays and Sundays. Eventually, all these will become grievous because the university will be in the public glare, not for academic excellence, but for how the university administration would have messed up the whole system.

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You claimed there have been infractions cum breaches in the ongoing examination. Could you highlight some?

There are a good number of them. One, apart from illegal and inappropriate reallocation of courses, lectures were barely five weeks old when ASUU declared the strike, and lectures are supposed to hold for 12 weeks. This means that students were yet to attend 50 per cent of lectures before examinations whereas the regulations guiding examinations in OAU states that students should attend at least 75 per cent of lectures before they could write examinations. In terms of the percentage attendance of lectures, the current examinations did not abide by this regulation. Secondly, lecture-free week was not observed at all. Rather, the university administration forced students into receiving lectures during the week. Lecture-free week is a statutory week of revision for students during which no lecture should hold. The current examinations did not allow students to observe this. Thirdly, many examination questions are not set by the lecturers that taught them, especially those courses that were stopped as a result of the declaration of the strike. Additionally, it is disheartening to state that majority of the final year examination questions were not moderated before being administered on the students. This is a serious violation of examination regulation and it calls to question the supposed degree such students would be awarded.

 

What are the implications of these supposed breaches for students being examined?

Let me identify a very serious implication of this illegality: students who would not complete their examination in the current one will automatically have outstanding courses in the next academic session. Let me explain, if a students had registered for eight courses in the current semester but was only able to complete five of those courses, by the time the next session resumes, the three courses that were not done in the examination become “carry-overs”. On the other hand, final year students would be forced to have an extra year. This illegality could also result into crises in the university.

 

What action(s) is OAU ASUU planning to take?

We will make sure the vice chancellor, deans, heads of departments and other individuals involved in the examination are held responsible and accountable for these vices. After that, OAU ASUU will report to all regulatory bodies. For record sake, the congress of 16/01/2019 resolved to report these infractions to the Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission (NUC).