The Passport to Nigeria’s Future

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today” – Malcolm X

I happen to be one who is very passionate about the educational system in Nigeria. Well, I wasn’t until I dug further and realised that education (learning) could be very interesting. Education, our passport (authorization) to the future…

What has the Nigerian education system thrown at us?

At the basic and secondary level:

In the rural areas: classrooms under trees or in the hot sun, broken windows, leaking roofs, no chairs/tables, mud walls as writing boards, unqualified teachers and the good part, it is affordable. Well, how wouldn’t it be, when what they get is crap?

In the urban areas you get the comfort of everything (if the teachers have not been developed beyond the Nigerian university level, I cannot guarantee their qualification) then you have to pay though your sweat.

At the University Level: I urge private universities students not to think themselves having better educational qualification than the Government universities students. The same thing taught by most lecturers/professors in the government university is what is taught to you. Sadly, you pay more for it! Little or no university policy, no originality, absurd learning structures, plagiarized study materials…

Our educational system is running with a time bomb that will explode really soon. The effects are already in view. With students buying their grades where possible and educational policies clothed in ambiguities, we see our graduates unable to think! This is another reason for the high level of unemployment in the country. Truthfully, who will employ a graduate with an empty head? For this, I blame solely the Government. If they had not allowed greed eat them up, they would have taken time to look into our dead and almost buried educational system. Just a few institutions are trying to rebrand the Nigerian educational system. How far can a few go?

Benjamin Franklin said “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest”. Dear Federal, State, and Local Government, every year we hear about the billions and trillions of Naira in the budget for the educational system! What is the purpose of wasting all these money and yielding same results? With due respect Sirs, did not Albert Einstein say “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. I always hear my lecturer (Dr. Femi Gbenro Oyekan) say “If you are on the wrong track, except you retrace your steps to the origin of the fault, you are still on the wrong track”.

Help us retrace our steps! Our future is in our education and it fears me what the future of Nigerian will be when we are educating our leaders to be illiterates! Poverty eradication cannot be successful either until illiteracy is given high priority. “Hatred, intolerance, poor hygienic conditions and violence all have root in illiteracy…” –Abdul Qadeer Khan. Look deep into the policies you have thrown out at us and let there be implementations this time around!

Dum’i Franncisca Onwufuju

Leadership League Student, International School of Management Lagos

(20.02.2013)

ACADEMIC (DIS) HONESTY IN THE NIGERIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM: LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OR EXPOSURE?

Those who are passionate about academic and integrity news will agree with me that in the last couple of years, cases of plagiarism have been hitting the media like never before. It’s an indication that a new wave of revolution is sweeping through the global academia and Nigeria may be one of the worst hit nations.

                                                              

I will refer to two of these cases involving respectable scholars who students should actually look up to:

1.   Re: THISDAY Newspaper, Monday, November 12, 2012 (Pg. 58) “Two UNIPORT lecturers sued for Plagiarism”.

According to THISDAY Newspaper publication of the above date, “Two lecturers in the Department of Economics, University of Port-Harcourt, Professor Steve Tamuno and Professor Needorn Richard Sorle, have been dragged before a Federal High Court for alleged plagiarism. Professor Victor Dike, an adjunct Professor in the School of Engineering & Technology, National University, Sacramento, United State, who had already dragged the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, to court over a similar issue, alleged that the two lecturers copied his article titled “Corruption in Nigeria: Understanding and Managing the Challenge” published in the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) Economic Indicators”   

2.      Another article was published recently about the German Minister of Education, Annette Schavan, on a case of alleged plagiarism in his doctoral research work. This article is published by the  Mail Online  a t (http:www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2274411/Annette-Schavan-German-education-minister-stripped-doctorate-university-plagiarised-large-parts-thesis.html).

Reported by Steven Robson, and published at 13:52 GMT, 6 February 2013/Updated 10:12 GMT, 7 February 2013, “German education minister stripped of doctorate after her university found she ‘plagiarized large parts of her thesis.  Annette Schavan, 57, under pressure to resign after decision of the University of Duesseldorf says her work contained ‘a substantial number of unaccredited direct quotes from other texts’. According to the reports, she is the second government minister to be found guilty of plagiarism  but she denies the accusation and says she will take legal action.”

Unfortunately, the educational system in Nigeria is in a case of undeniable crisis! We cannot deny that fact; the same way we cannot deny that at least three-quarter of Nigerian graduates do not know what it means to avoid plagiarism! Universities do not operate any policy document or practice of academic integrity which students must abide with. Nigerian lecturers dub materials from all sources and republish them as their own work.  Many of those works are also sold to ignorant and unsuspecting students.

As much as we will want to blame government for everything including the failure of the educational system, I will like to state that we are all guilty! The Government and its regulatory agencies, the Institutions and their governing councils, the Tutors and the parents, as well as the Students who unfortunately happen to be the victims!

Regrettably, rules of academic integrity and originality have been widely flouted in the Nigerian education system, making tutors, professionals and students totally unaware of, or flagrantly disregard what it means to plagiarize. Anti-plagiarism policies are not popular in our local undergraduate and postgraduate curricular. We are not creating any significantly new knowledge yet there is gross academic dishonesty in Nigeria.

As much as I know, in the whole of Nigeria, it’s only the International School of Management (ISM) Lagos and Covenant University (I wish to be corrected) that have operative policies and systems on Academic Integrity and Anti-plagiarism for their faculty and students.

Plagiarism is not in the academe alone, public and private practitioners have to be accountable to the originality of their knowledge and reports. Everyone else who has reasons to write report and share idea or knowledge is vulnerable. 

If we have to probe every Nigerian faculty and the student, senior professional and government official who go about giving volumes of speeches and addresses, I imagine how many people would be asked to be stripped of their honors and resign their appointments as it is done in Germany and other countries.  That this is not happening now does not mean it may never happen; publications are permanent documents and can be referred to at any time even after decades. If we give anti-plagiarism half the attention we give to anti-money laundering, our case may just be better as a nation.  A word is enough for the wise.

Dumebi Onwufuju (Dum'i)

ISM Leadership League Student

International School of Management (ISM) Lagos

(10.02.2013)

My Today’s Education: My Future Career

When I become an adult, I would like to be a lawyer.

A number of reasons have made me want this:

I hate to see children sell on the road,

I hate to see children who cannot read or write,

I hate to hear of drunken fathers who beat their children,

I hate to see children beg by the road side,

I hate to hear of children being violated and killed,

I want to be a lawyer to help these children,

But I must be educated first.

I want the right education: it is my heritage,

I want my teachers properly educated,

I want basic education affordable for all,

I want our learning facilities to be of high standard,

I want, I want, I want…

I want the best of education.

 Tonna Esther Chukelu (8yrs)

                                                                                                  (1^st April 2013)

A Victim's Cry

Its really sad that in the last 2 years, the cases of rape have increased drastically, or do I say there has been a drastic increase in the media coverage of rape cases. Tearfully, majority of these victims are children who do not make it afterwards. Every girl we loose to rape is mother who should have changed her generation.

The act of rape still falls back to female gender violence. If men see women as the 'weaker' sex, are they not cowardly to beat them, derive 'pleasure' by hurting them and in most cases kill them?

Its not power! There's no victory in overpowering someone who you are already stronger than! There is no pleasure in hurting people! There is no victory in victimizing someone who is incapable of defending herself!

It is evening sickening when these victims are children. I was thought in biology that a girl only becomes sexually attractive at puberty. How does one look at a child and get aroused? Again I ask: How does one get sexually aroused by a two years old girl?

I think the cure to pedophilia should be castration. I may sound unreasonably bitter, but I'm speaking as a girl whose innocence and life has been brutally snatched before she had the opportunity to begin life, a lady who spends her years building a life and then watch it all sink into nothing in a split second! A mother who does not know the right words to say to her daughter who's been sexually molested! A soul who is regarded as an outcast for being a victim.

Everyday, we say something has to be done! Children are our heritage, let's protect them. Don't overlook a pedophile today, your ward may be his victim tomorrow.

   
                                                                                                                   - Dumebi Onwufuju (Dum'i)

April 11, 2013
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