As
has become fashionable, the lamentation of the Nigerian condition has been more
vociferous from the tribe of those saddled with the task of ameliorating it.
The
Director General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brigadier Nnamdi
Okorie-Affia joined the bandwagon recently when he made some not-so-startling
statements about the NYSC scheme.
Some universities, according to him, have
been sending “graduates” to the scheme who can hardly speak English. The
quality of these graduates is so appalling that employers who can’t find any
use for them are left with no choice but to send them back to the NYSC.
The
NYSC has also discovered that some universities send “graduates” of courses not
accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC) for the NYSC scheme.
Okorie-Affia
didn’t state if the graduates of unaccredited courses are the same as the ones
employers don’t find useful. Worst still, he said some universities collect
bribe from Nigerians interested in the NYSC scheme and send them in large
numbers for national service, straining the NYSC budget and making planning
impossible.
Again, it is not known if these presumably young Nigerians who
bribe their way into the NYSC have undergone any university training, even on
non-accredited courses.
The
NYSC Director-General has opened up another debate on the troubles that plague
another national institution. His charges against “some” universities raise so
many questions any comment on them has to be provisional.
First, it is
regrettable that the concerned universities have not been named. Are these
problems limited to a few universities, which thus can fairly easily be
addressed or is the malaise near systemic? It is not clear the extent to which
the DG’s comments can be taken as a general feedback on the quality of our
higher institutions, which is undoubtedly at a low ebb.
It
is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is indeed within the powers of the NYSC
Director-General to take concrete actions on the skeletons he has exhumed. The
easiest of these is to report universities sending unsuitable “graduates” to
the National Universities Commission (NUC), and to the police, in cases where
it is discovered that these universities have taken bribe to mobilize the
concerned students for the National Youth Service Corps Scheme.
Similarly, the
NYSC should let the NUC know that certain universities produce graduates who
cannot speak English and are not educated enough to teach in even primary
schools.
The Governing Councils of such universities should also be informed of
the poor quality of students that are coming out as graduates from their
schools. Indeed, the NYSC would be rendering a great service to the university
system and to employers and parents if it publishes an annual ranking of the
employability of graduates from different universities based on the feedback
from employers.
There are anecdotal accounts of the high quality of graduates
of certain private universities, which the NYSC ranking system may confirm or
disprove. The proposed NYSC ranking may even include a table of employer
satisfaction with the graduates of particular disciplines in different
universities.
Such a ranking will also be useful as additional feedback for the
National Universities Commission on the quality of training in Nigerian
universities. It is high time the Nigerian public had some kind of external
evaluation of the work of academics, as the government cannot be solely held
responsible for the poor quality of Nigerian university graduates.
What have
University Governing Councils done about the poor quality of graduates that
employers and parents have complained about for so long?
Nevertheless,
the NYSC Director-General’s comments is a challenge to the government and the
university community to take a hard look at Nigerian higher education system
and initiate measures to improve the quality of its output.
It is no secret that
Nigerian universities rank poorly even within Africa and that academics have
forsaken publishing works in competitive international journals for the
low-hanging fruits of domestic journals of doubtful quality whose credibility
do not extend beyond the shores of Nigeria or beyond the boundaries of
particular universities, in many cases.
Universities have developed their own
version of zoning and quota systems, which works against merit in hiring and
promotion. There is an urgent need to boost the quality and performance of
academics, a question which, no doubt, is tied to good remuneration, among
other things.
Many Nigerians sadly have resigned to the reality that
universities are unable to retain their best products as lecturers, a far cry
from the 1960s and 1970s when Nigeria attracted international faculty members,
and lecturers routinely published their research in the best academic journals
in the world.
There
are no easy solutions to transforming the quality of Nigerian universities. But
solutions must entail abandoning orthodoxies and taking hard decisions.
Certainly, the country needs to increase opportunity for technical and
vocational training.
More
of the young people should be trained to acquire skills for which they can find
ready use in the economy, especially as innovators or small business creators.
Nigeria also needs to spend more on teacher training and salaries at the
primary and secondary school levels so that we can have secondary school
leavers who are easily trainable for jobs or who can gain far more from
university education.
There
is currently a crisis in the education sector, which has a negative economic
impact that is comparable to the damage the nation’s inadequate power supply
does to productivity. What is surprising is the absolute lack of appropriate
response from the government.
In
the end, the revelation by the NYSC Director General about the woeful quality
of some graduates must be taken as a call to action.
Source: The Guardian.
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