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Who will rescue Nigeria’s varsity students?

“Do not ever call this line again in your life!”, the magisterial voice bellowed from the other end. The student stood rooted to the spot, nonplussed and convulsing with fear. She had only called her supervisor to know when he would be in the office so that she could hand in the next stage in her long essay: Graduation Day was imminent. But His Academic Majesty took no calls from students and if you did not find him in the office whenever he fancied being there, you were entirely on your own.

There’s no hyperbole here: this writer has seen married men and women literally trembling before a professor’s office, awaiting the certification of the corrections made to their thesis following their oral defence. The man would only attend to post-grads on Fridays, and that was between 12pm and 1p.m. when he would unfailingly proceed to observe Jumat, purging the cloud of cigarette smoke that enveloped his office. Within the allotted hour he attended to no more than two supplicants, for he was a very thorough and methodical assessor: an “A” not perfectly aligned was high treason. As soon as it was 1.pm. you knew your fate was sealed, even if you had come all the way from Kutuwenji. You had to come back next week. A writer spent four months correcting a form, and when it was signed it was after a rebuke: “I’ve been coming here for four months. I am tired.” He got an apology, then as he made for the door he heard a lady who had only been two weeks on queue grumbling. He shook his head, knowing she would still be there in at least two months.

Another incident, a dissertation defence at a prestigious university in the land of Oduduwa, the man many are now panning for denying them Arabian citizenship by embarking on a meaningless journey to Ile-Ife through the Sahara desert: “Now, Mr. Ayantayo, let’s look at what you would prefer to call Methodology..” Even the External Examiner was stupefied, for it was the candidate’s supervisor speaking. The reason for the dastardly turn of events was unveiled later in the day as the rejected candidate was made to know his real offence in his supervisor’s office: “You are too young to be a Dr, Mr Ayantade!”

Well, Mr Ayantade eventually became Dr. Ayantade, and produced a booklet from a small research he had commanded his supervisee to write in his (Ayantade’s) own name. The booklets were sold to students in another university where the dangerous don also taught, and during the trip back to the car park the don bellowed: “Ondo man, are you annoyed?”

“No sir!,” the M.A candidate replied, knowing that you had to love the Sango by force. “No, no, no, get annoyed! I am here to provoke you! Get annoyed!”, Dr Ayantade said as if by command. He had been tormented “in those days” and was prepared to teach the unwise.

Let’s shift momentarily to the United States, where a student told the Faculty point blank that he was not ready to write the semester’s examinations. Why? He had been playing football. The Faculty did not only shift the examination to his preferred date, it also granted him an additional week. You just do not, indeed CANNOT, treat students like trash in Uncle Sam’s country: their assessment is vital to the retention of your job.

Here, with a few exceptions, the lecturer is a god among men who scoffs at lesser mortals. He is worker, Governing Council and Government rolled into one. He tells the Government, the employer of his employer (Governing Council) what to pay, how to pay, and when to pay him, and how much to put in the varsity purse. He can go off work for a year and get paid without stress. He determines when to teach. His words are stout: “A is for God, B is for me. Make your choice among the rest. I am only looking forward to teaching you, not passing you. Whatever I don’t know you are not supposed to know. The day I see you with a photocopied note, that is the day you will graduate from this university! Many of you will still get no jobs when you graduate. Aren’t you excited?”

For at least 40 years, Nigeria’s university students have “bought market” in the name of acquiring a university degree. They have been treated like trash, spat upon, traumatized and subjected to the most virulent of psychological traumas under the sun. Due to no fault of theirs, they have served for decades as hostages in the dark conflict between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Along with their long-suffering parents who have to feed and clothe them for six years instead of four, they can never be sure when they will graduate. They are treated like scum by both political and intellectual leaders.

The torment is manifold: as biological laws rage in the body, those meaning to stay pure till the marriage bed become mad with worry: industrial unrest tasks their patience to no end. They do not want to falter, but nature will not cease calling: they are therefore frozen in time, arrested by strikes that loathe expiry date. It is no wonder that their temper is tempest.

The current ASUU strike is only in its seventh month, but babies are on the way in many a student’s world. That is for those who do not know their way with abortifacients, and those for whom “menstrual regulation” (a demonic euphemism for abortion) is anathema. Even when school resumes in preparation for the next strike, Nigeria’s varsity students may not get their results in time, as their teachers may say that there is no data to upload results.

How interesting that amidst their plethoric illogic, the chief tormentors of students and prime movers of sedition in the Ivory Towers wonder why the tide has turned so determinedly against them! In desperate essays they wonder when they lost so much ground and why they have become so little esteemed. They do not remember how they betrayed public trust with their decades of paid unrest. They do not remember the session-long salaries they collected in 2020 for doing exactly nothing. They are like Odili Samalu, the narrator in Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People who carpets politicians for their manifest evils but justifies his own dubious ways. They cannot see why social sympathy for their cause is shrinking even while Abuja errs. As they say on the street, “their format don cast.” (i.e no longer works).

Nigeria’s varsity students desire and deserve to graduate, get jobs, start a family and assist their parents in their old age. But neither ASUU nor the Government gives a damn: they are playing ping-pong with the future of Nigerian students. It’s a crying shame. There must be better choices in 2023.

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