Academic Corruption: Reining In Randy, Corrupt Lecturers

Editor’s note: Corruption has wormed itself in every aspect of life in Nigeria. Obule Ocheyenor, the Naij.com columnist, identifies the forms of academic corruption in Nigerian institutions of higher education. For Nigeria to achieve acedemic excellence, things have to change drastically in schools, colleges and universities across the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s trenchant denunciation of academic corruption has brought to the fore one of the leading causes of the fall in the standard of education in Nigeria’s institutions of higher learning. Lecturers have been neck-deep in academic corruption without anybody challenging them. They act like the lords of the manor as they take advantage of young undergraduates that look up to them for academic direction and imparting knowledge to them.

It was in this situation that hapless students and their parents found themselves until recently when President Buhari became the voice of the voiceless by raising the red flag against the randy and corrupt lecturers, warning them to desist from such unwholesome activities on campuses.

Forms of academic corruption: extorting money

Academic corruption comes in various dimensions. But the most prominent ones are sexual harassment and what is generally called “sorting”. “Sorting” is a slang on campus which refers to a situation whereby students are compelled to pay lecturers so that they could be awarded marks they did not score during examinations.

It is so bad that indigent but brilliant students who could not afford the money demanded by lecturers are made to fail the courses and sometimes have to carry-over the courses or even fail to graduate in the case of final year students.

Failing students who do not buy handouts or textbooks written by lecturers is another form of academic corruption that is prevalent in the nation’s so-called Ivory Towers. Some lecturers use their textbooks in exchange for marks as a form of continuous assessment for students who buy the textbooks. This form of victimisation is endemic in the academic environment.

Forms of academic corruption: forced sexual acts

Sexual harassment of female students by male lecturers is the oldest form of academic corruption almost accepted as a norm because of its pervasiveness on campuses. Lecturers old enough to be fathers of the female undergraduates throw everything to the dogs in order to lure the students to bed in exchange for marks.

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While some upright students play hard to get and are punished by the lecturers with award of poor marks, the lazy “runs girls” (female students who spend all their time on campus socializing and engaging in endless “sexcapades” with “Aristos” (men with fat wallets) off campus in exchange for cash to pay their fees and fend for themselves), are usually willing to throw themselves into the open arms of the lecherous lecturers. In return, they get the marks they do not deserve as they do not burn the proverbial midnight oil like their other hardworking coursemates.

This category of students end up not being able to defend their degrees in the larger society after their graduation. Only exceptionally brilliant female students outwit lecturers who try to use marks in exchange for sex to victimise them because the brilliant student does not need such marks to get good grades.

Institutions of higher education must act

Vice chancellors of universities are supposed to know about the prevalence of academic corruption on campuses but turn a blind eye to it. That is why it is very rare to hear that lecturers have been caught in the act or brought to book.

The case of the University of Lagos lecturer (the institution has since disowned him) who took advantage of an admission-seeking teenage daughter of his friend by allegedly raping her on campus is just one among many of such sexual harassment cases on university campuses across the country.

Even married women attending part-time courses in universities are not spared by randy lecturers. Some of the lecturers carry out this act right in their offices. There are a few lecturers who are above board, especially the elderly ones, but the vast majority of the younger lecturers engage in the act.

Recently, some distraught parents who had not been able to pay their children’s tuition fees in a state-owned university in the southsouth region of Nigeria expressed their disgust when the children informed the parents that lecturers in the university were demanding money in order to award them good grades in the examination they had just written. They told their parents that some of the students had started paying the money. Since the indigent students could not afford the money, their fate now hangs in the balance.

But this anomaly has to stop. As President Buhari now leads the charge against academic corruption, state governors who are visitors to the state-owned universities should also toe the same path and restore the universities to that noble era of moral rectitude and academic excellence.

The era of impunity whereby lecturers operated like law unto themselves and took advantage of innocent students by exploiting them under various guises must stop

Mr Ocheyenor wrote from Lagos.

The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Naij.com.

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