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)
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