Bureaucratic stonewalling in public service has perhaps reached its feverish pitch at the least expected places – the tertiary education sector. And in case anyone is still looking for reasons for the near-collapse of tertiary education in Nigeria or why it is a basket case draining off its best hands daily, there it is at Prof. Olufemi Peters-led National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN).
For clarity, Prof. Peters has a sterling track record in academics and administration to justify his appointment as the Vice Chancellor of NOUN. Technically, he is a square peg in a square hole. However, to him belongs a personal standard that his institution has rarely lived up to. And that contradiction warrants this piece.
When President Olusegun Obasanjo, as he then was, reopened the Open University in 2001 after 17 years of closure, he had in mind an open distance learning institution to cater for the largest number of students in a single university in Nigeria. The adult-like ‘do-it-yourself’ setting has less stringent entry requirements, and tailor-made to fill the knowledge-gap and certification of people in all walks of life without the barrier of space and time.
Remarkably, the President too returned to the NOUN classrooms at the end of his administration to bag Master and doctorate degrees in Christian Theology – perhaps in preparation for ministerial calling or afterlife. In principle, it is a good stop-gap for the matured that want to have a feel of tertiary education without the rigors of conventional university setting.
But the trouble is matching the Jankara market model with the requisite workforce of teachers and knowledge depth expected of a university graduate. With over half a million students enrolling for 50 programmes and offering 750 courses across 103 study centres nationwide yearly, the institution would require thousands of lecturers than it can employ full-time. To complement its regular staff, the management has engaged more part-time services of lecturers that are affiliated to other universities to bridge the gap.
Sadly, the problem has been that of the right motivation that is fast waning at this one-of-kind university, and a reason Prof. Peters should be asking questions. Today, NOUN is one institution that has more full-time members of staff supposedly ‘studying abroad’ than it has on ground at the university centres. Some have been away for more than five years, yet consistently draw monthly salaries from the institution. It is a given that more than 70 per cent of this lot will not return to this country or NOUN anytime soon.
To alleviate the suffering of overwhelmed staffers and also scale the hurdle of NUC accreditation, the Jabi Headquarters of the university in Abuja, lately employed lecturers to fill some vacant seats across departments. But curiously, many of the new entrants have rarely been paid in the last one year of their employment! Scores of our brightest minds, PhD and Masters’ Degree holders that managed to get in through the needle eye in January 2021 (yes, it is that ugly in our citadels of learning!), only received their first pay in October! To date, there is neither pledge nor hint on when the nine-month arrears will be paid. And whenever the impoverished scholars ask questions, the management team would conveniently accuse them of being ingrates, saying they should be glad that they have jobs in the first place! Really?
The rubble has piled up to the heavens at NOUN. It is the same dysfunctionality that has discoloured the noble initiative of drawing a pool of facilitators from institutions nationwide. That stop-gap measure too is fast assuming a sloppy arrangement that has no provision for an efficient reward system to motivate the lecturing community. For instance, there were over 300 facilitators that were trained in the weeklong online facilitation section in September 2021 ahead of the commencement of the 2021_2 session. That session was wrapped up early December. To date, neither the training nor facilitation fee has been paid by NOUN. Inasmuch as the officer of facilitation to academics and professionals is not a get-rich-quick venture, the participants are deserving of their rewards as and when due. And if fraud is not intended by the delay, it readily puts the university administration in a very bad light.
The immediate result of mismanaging a critical workforce is already before NOUN, if they must take another long hard look at themselves. In the Online Facilitation Report dated December 14, 2021, a faculty had an average of 130 facilitators for the 2021_2, out of which less than 20 per cent performed above average in tutelage. Some of the internal lecturers of the same faculty did not even record a point, to show that they had no single (synchronous or asynchronous) interface with students throughout the eight weeks calendar semester. That is one faculty, yet the rot cuts across the board. The question is if the moonlighting facilitators are failing woefully in their responsibilities, why blame the students for dismal examination results?
Indeed, the Directorate of Academics, and NOUN management at large, can never be in want of excuses for infidelity to administrative efficiency. The same applies to most of the Federal Universities that keep blaming IPPIS and other bureaucratic bottlenecks for their inability to fill departmental vacancies in the last three years despite overwhelming needs. But the worry is the implication on enrollees that are collecting certificates in such warp systems. No matter how well students can independently study materials to understand a course (an argument that has lost its purchase given our poor reading culture), there is no dismissing the add-on values of committed guides/facilitators on the side.
With the brain drain ravaging the entire public institutions, to still find experienced and good teachers is priceless and they should be treated as such. The corollary is that poor reading culture and demotivated staffers/facilitators can only produce certificated semi-illiterates that have managed to pass but know nothing of value to solve societal problems in their so-called areas of specialisation. NOUN can only fool its facilitators for one semester, but the joke is on the entire system afterwards.
Prof. Peters and his management must rejig the workforce motivation strategy and have a system that is fair to all cadres. Assuming he is not aware, the Vice Chancellor should inquire into the skewed model that emboldens senior managers to feed fat on the system at the expense of junior and academic staffers/facilitators that are denied of their basics. Prof. Peters’ excellent persona is not in doubt, but his university should live up to his standard through urgent reforms.
Adio wrote from Lagos.
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