By Asuku Sufyan Onimisi (PhD)
When “Wicked Lecturer” Means you Refused to Write their Final Year Projects for a Stipend or Let them Cheat Sporadically without being Disciplined in Examination Halls
Nigerian public universities/higher institutions have a new definition of a good lecturer…..(Quite musing)
He is not the one who explains well. He is the one who looks away in the exam hall while you copy. He is not the one who guides your research. He is the one who writes the entire final year project for you while you sit and wait to pay (crazy)….
If you refuse, you are wicked. You are not friendly. You are not understanding.
This is the reality of teaching in Nigeria today. I have had my fair share of this experience.
I am a lecturer, and I can tell you for free: our students, especially this Gen Z, do not want to learn. Many believe that paying school fees is enough to buy a degree. No research. No reading. They want you to do the job for them. If you insist that they must do it themselves, that your job is to guide, correct, and point them to sources, you become the enemy.
In the exam hall, it is worse. They expect you to ignore them when they are cheating, when they are talking to their seatmates, when they are doing everything except writing their own exam. If you keep quiet, you are celebrated as an understanding lecturer. If you enforce discipline, you are hated
And who is encouraging them? Sadly, our own colleagues (the very Lecturers who are suppose to guide and correct them).
There are lecturers who have turned project supervision into a business. Pay me, I write it for you. There are those who exchange grades for money or for sex. There are those who dash out marks that students did not earn, just to be called popular. These colleagues do not tell students to read. They tell them there is no need to read because sorting has been perfected.
This is why companies are rejecting our graduates. It is not because there are no jobs. It is because many graduates do not know the basics of the course written on their certificate. We are producing paper graduates.
It is appalling. And the government is looking away from our public institutions.
To the few honest lecturers still standing, I say: continue to do the needful. Encourage students to read. Let them write their own projects while you guide them. Discipline when necessary, but do not be unnecessarily harsh. And never, never be part of those who trade grades for sex or money.
We were not employed to be popular. We were employed to teach.
Our higher institutions will not be saved by new buildings alone. They will be saved when we bring back integrity to the classroom.
– Asuku Sufyan Onimisi (PhD) writes from Okene
