U.S. bound Nigerian students attend pre-departure orientation

RANDY university lecturers, who are in the habit of sexually harassing their female students, will soon be made to face the full wrath of the law.

Besides, indolent non academic staff members, who derive pleasure in treating students’ requests for academic transcripts with levity, thereby frustrating such students’ efforts to secure admission in foreign universities, will also, in due course, be made to face the consequences of their actions.

According to the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Mr. Ekpo Nta, the bogus excuse – Matured Consent – which some university teachers rely on to perpetrate immoral acts, will no longer be acceptable in the new comprehensive legal framework, being put together by the ICPC, to address the several lapses discovered in the university system.

Briefing journalists in Abuja last week, Nta revealed that several complaints and petitions by stakeholders to the ICPC, informed its decision to carry out a University System Study and Review, code-named USSR, which led to startling revelations. Section 6 (b – d) of ICPC’s enabling Act, empowers it to undertake a comprehensive review of the Nigerian university system.

But Nta was quick to assert that the commission was not seeking to regulate the tertiary education system, but only seeks to work with a key regulator like the National Universities Commission (NUC) and other stakeholders like the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TTFUND).

Among the serious challenges discovered in the universities, according to Nta, were abuse and utter disregard for stipulated rules, policies and procedures in terms of admissions, examination management, recruitment, promotions, contracts awards and infrastructure. The commission also discovered several cases of sexual harassment of both staff and students, examination malpractice, falsification of official documents like transcripts, nepotism, plagiarism and contract manipulation among others. The pilot study was carried in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago- Iwoye (OOU) and Salem University, Lokoja. The commission’s fact finding mission also led to visits to the University of Ibadan (UI), Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State and the Osun State University.

As a result of the findings, the commission has produced a “Template for Prevention” of systemic corruption in the universities. The idea is to ensure that Nigerian tertiary institutions comply with the basic tenets of higher education management and also conform to international best practices.

“Our role,” Nta stated, “is limited strictly to correcting and preventing corrupt prone processed and procedures, as provided in Section 6 (b-d) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000.” He affirmed that at the conclusion of the review exercise, a new system of operation would be established, which universities must follow. Any deviation from the rules, he warned, would attract prosecution, just as regular monitoring and evaluation exercises would be carried out without prior formal notice.

Speaking extensively on sexual harassment, Nta said: “We know some of the pressure that our young girls go through in the university system. At the end of this exercise, even if some would say, yes, they are consenting adults and that they can be in love with their lecturers, this will not acceptable. You would have to hold on to that “love” until you graduate, because you are in a master-servant relationship. There is no way such a relationship would not affect the grading of your paper.”

Commenting on the challenge of obtaining transcripts from the universities, he said: “Issues of missing transcripts occur because someone has misplaced the file deliberately. We are going to help the universities to come to an agreement on how things should be done and we intend to give a time frame, within a number of days, that transcripts must be produced when students apply for such. Corruption thrives when you have discretion over whether to respond or not (to requests for transcripts), but when we make it part of the regulation, that you must respond within four days, and that if you don’t respond within those four days, there would be a problem, then institutions would sit up.”

The commission also discovered many illegal degree-awarding institutions across the country. Besides, there was a revelation that even approved institutions run unaccredited programmes, the true status of which the hapless students may not know.

His words: “When we visit, we demand for documents and equipment that have been listed as existing in the various universities. We will not treat this as a minor breach because the intention is very clear, which is to deceive or defraud. If money was appropriated for the procurement of certain equipment, why would a university go and borrow during an accreditation exercise and then return them after accreditation.”

The ICPC boss disclosed that the commission was able to close down 20 illegal degree-awarding mills, including those with acclaimed foreign affiliations without proof. According to him, out of the 41 identified illegal degree mills scheduled for investigation, some of them voluntarily closed shop and went out of business.

The exercise, which was carried out in Lagos, Abia, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi, Delta, Edo, Kano, Nassarawa, Kwara, Imo, Kogi, Osun, Benue, Plateau and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, has so far led to series of arrests and arraignments in court.

Nta said: “The commission is taking every legitimate step to ensure that only the indicted individuals are prosecuted. Arrangements are also being finalized to ensure the re-opening of four institutions earlier closed down and to also ensure that their            names are delisted from the NUC’s list of illegal universities.”

He continued:  “Some of these institutions claimed to be representing institutions abroad. And while we had to make contacts with the ambassadors of such countries, some ambassadors were even surprised.”

According to him, there is an urgent need to re-orientate the parents on the seriousness of the situation. “The desperation of some parents is actually contributing to pushing children into the wrong places,” he observed. “When you begin to send children between the ages of 15-17 to countries like Ukraine, where they would have to learn a new language, it brings about unintended consequences. If it’s a boy, it can be controlled. But you can imagine a 16-year-old girl in Ukraine, just because you want the child to read medicine abroad, in a society that is obviously racist; where jobs are not available even for the local people; and where they look at these students as aliens.”

On examination malpractice, Nta said: “When there is news that students are arrested for examination fraud, have we ever gone behind to find out the condition of the schools where these students learn? We did a study on the background of the schools the students are coming from and most of them don’t have laboratories and teachers. When the law says arrest students, in such a situation, whom would you be arresting? Is it not better to arrest the person, institutions or agencies who put such schools in place than to arrest innocent children?”

Also under the new template, universities would be required to report to the commission, students that they have punished for examination malpractice so that their records would be included in the Commission’s database of offenders.

As a result of various stakeholders’ meetings held with institutions in respect of their operations and virements in their budgetary statutory allocations, the ICPC Chairman revealed that some institutions were already returning unremitted balances of personal votes, based on the circular that all institutions and agencies must return the remnants of their personnel votes, if they were not utilized.

His said: “We promised we were going to prosecute any agency that did not return such money and we are in the process of verifying. I am happy to state that quite a number of our institutions complied and are returning money to the treasury and we are compiling the records”.

Also in the course of the review, Nta stated that it was discovered that certain utility sub-heads, like power and water supply on campus, were conflicting and may prove difficult to manage. He however insisted: “The government regulation is that you cannot take money from one sub-head to fund another sub-head. One major outcome of our findings showed that, there was a need to adequately fund the provision of outsourced services, like security and cleaning; utilities like power, water, communications and others. So far, our findings and recommendations have been communicated to the Ministry of Finance and the Budget Office for consideration.”

However, Nta pointed out that the most powerful weapon in the ICPC Act is prevention. “If we prevent someone from stealing N1billion naira,” he explained, “it may not attract much response. But when we arrest someone for stealing N100, 000, it would be on the front pages of newspapers. But in terms of effect, the prevention approach would yield a better result in future. Even during system review, we tell the institutions that we have not come to arrest but to help them develop the system.”

Meanwhile the National Values Curriculum (NVC), jointly formulated by the ICPC and the National Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) will soon be unveiled as a weapon for attitudinal change of Nigerians, through education.

The NVC, which also comes with a Teacher’s Guide, is applicable at all levels of education and is geared towards exposing the Nigerian child to sustained good values and ethical issues from the early years to young adulthood.

On the response in some of the institutions the commission has interacted with, Nta was very emphatic that ICPC’s officers do not condone any form of welfare package. He said: “The universities complained bitterly about Visitation Panels, not from the NUC, but from different bodies. When they (panels) come, they expect the institutions to provide accommodation, transport and make all kinds of demands. We have put that in our reports. We are now going to make it public.”

Author of this article: By Mary Ogar