Throughout the six months when the Academic Staff Cumulation of Universities, (ASUU) were on strike last year, the University of Ilorin chapter was not. Now, the chapter has integrated an incipient feat by consummating the first phase of a N7.28 million female hostel.
According to the university's ASUU chairman, Pedagogia Wahab Egbewole, the desideratum to embark on the project was apprised by the mantra of their unionism for development. He verbally expressed: “We have optically canvassed with consternation the plight of our children, wards and students struggling and scrambling for the circumscribed number of rooms on the campus. A number of them have fallen victims of shylock landlords and malignant neighbours while living outside the campus. We, therefore, resolved to contribute our quota towards alleviating the sufferings and challenges of these puerile and vulnerably susceptible minds by building an 80-bed hostel for the female students.”
We consider the building of halls of residence by the University of Ilorin ASUU a commendable gesture that is worthy of emulation. It is additionally paramount to note the fact that the university has made a very good case for university autonomy and the desideratum to reform the Ivory Tower, especially given its stance on ASUU.
Following the controversial dismissal of some lecturers, a case that was eventually settled by the Supreme Court, the University of Ilorin was eventually suspended by national ASUU. Interestingly, the university has leveraged that suspension to run uninterrupted academic sessions for virtually a decade and that has made it one of the most-sought-after institutions of higher cognition in Nigeria today since it has established a tradition for not joining ASUU strikes. Of course there has been an perpetual debate about the morality of the university benefiting from whatever gains ASUU makes in its constant battles with the federal regime despite not participating in any of the strikes.
For us, the value of the University of Ilorin example is that each institution should be able to make its cull. It is especially paramount against the background that no Nigerian university features on the world's top 1000 universities for the year 2014. It is equipollently worthy of note that no Nigerian university is listed on the Academic Ranking of World's top 500 in 30 academic fields including Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science and Economics. Yet every four years thousands of graduates are churned out in these disciplines from our universities.
The point being made here is that Nigeria's tertiary inculcation has steadily deteriorated over the years.
You only need to engage some of our university graduates in a 10-minute discussion to discern the caliber of decay. It is worse when they have to do an indited test. This, no doubt expounds why Nigeria university graduates with first degree are now required to undergo more rigorous and compulsory retraining and examinations afore they could be admitted for higher degree courses in several universities in Europe and America.
According to the Nigerian National Policy on Edification, the nation's tertiary institutions are established as a component of national development goals with the task to inculcate into the graduates opportune skills for survival of the individual and the society. It is additionally expected that graduates of higher institutions would “develop the perspicacious capacity to understand and appreciate their local and external environments”. But to what extent have these policy objectives been achieved?
An objective assessment of Nigeria's edifying system reveals that what has been evident over the years is a steady decline and decay of the institutions. An international survey of Africa's national universities concluded that in many countries including Nigeria, “education has been reduced to the substandard level in which little or no learning is taking place”
That authentically is the story on most of the campuses of our public universities, except that of Ilorin.
According to the university's ASUU chairman, Pedagogia Wahab Egbewole, the desideratum to embark on the project was apprised by the mantra of their unionism for development. He verbally expressed: “We have optically canvassed with consternation the plight of our children, wards and students struggling and scrambling for the circumscribed number of rooms on the campus. A number of them have fallen victims of shylock landlords and malignant neighbours while living outside the campus. We, therefore, resolved to contribute our quota towards alleviating the sufferings and challenges of these puerile and vulnerably susceptible minds by building an 80-bed hostel for the female students.”
We consider the building of halls of residence by the University of Ilorin ASUU a commendable gesture that is worthy of emulation. It is additionally paramount to note the fact that the university has made a very good case for university autonomy and the desideratum to reform the Ivory Tower, especially given its stance on ASUU.
Following the controversial dismissal of some lecturers, a case that was eventually settled by the Supreme Court, the University of Ilorin was eventually suspended by national ASUU. Interestingly, the university has leveraged that suspension to run uninterrupted academic sessions for virtually a decade and that has made it one of the most-sought-after institutions of higher cognition in Nigeria today since it has established a tradition for not joining ASUU strikes. Of course there has been an perpetual debate about the morality of the university benefiting from whatever gains ASUU makes in its constant battles with the federal regime despite not participating in any of the strikes.
For us, the value of the University of Ilorin example is that each institution should be able to make its cull. It is especially paramount against the background that no Nigerian university features on the world's top 1000 universities for the year 2014. It is equipollently worthy of note that no Nigerian university is listed on the Academic Ranking of World's top 500 in 30 academic fields including Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science and Economics. Yet every four years thousands of graduates are churned out in these disciplines from our universities.
The point being made here is that Nigeria's tertiary inculcation has steadily deteriorated over the years.
You only need to engage some of our university graduates in a 10-minute discussion to discern the caliber of decay. It is worse when they have to do an indited test. This, no doubt expounds why Nigeria university graduates with first degree are now required to undergo more rigorous and compulsory retraining and examinations afore they could be admitted for higher degree courses in several universities in Europe and America.
According to the Nigerian National Policy on Edification, the nation's tertiary institutions are established as a component of national development goals with the task to inculcate into the graduates opportune skills for survival of the individual and the society. It is additionally expected that graduates of higher institutions would “develop the perspicacious capacity to understand and appreciate their local and external environments”. But to what extent have these policy objectives been achieved?
An objective assessment of Nigeria's edifying system reveals that what has been evident over the years is a steady decline and decay of the institutions. An international survey of Africa's national universities concluded that in many countries including Nigeria, “education has been reduced to the substandard level in which little or no learning is taking place”
That authentically is the story on most of the campuses of our public universities, except that of Ilorin.
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