Students and Lecturers

There are over 36 federal government-owned universities and over 30 state government-owned universities. All the federal universities in Nigeria admit an average of 5000 students yearly, making the number about 180,000 students yearly. We also have two polytechnics in every state—one federal and one state—fully operational. There is one college of education in every state of the country—including the federal capital territory. Generally, there are over 200 institutions of higher education in Nigeria and some are still under construction. Nigeria as a country has many academically smart people who are doing well in their various fields. There are also very uneducated people that are spread across the country.

Nigerian students at all levels are some of the hardest working and dedicated people I have ever seen, despite the fact that there are many forces within the country that try to stifle their efforts on a daily. Just as there are students in our universities, there are also lecturers whose main job is to make sure that the students learn what they came to school for. Although there are so many problems that confront students in school, I will focus on infrastructure and teaching activities. There are so many buildings in schools that serve different purposes that importance cannot be over-emphasized. There are classrooms, laboratories, press houses, storage facilities...etc. What matters most is the availability of the resources that are in place. Let’s take my school for instance. I am a student of the Micheal Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike(MOUAU) and I can say from experience that the problems we face in the school cannot be attributed only to poor infrastructure—our lecturers also have their fair share of problems. The major problems students face in the process of learning are small lecture rooms, poorly ventilated buildings, ill-equipped labs…etc.

Although we have an infrastructure problem, I don’t think it should be as relevant as it is today. Just imagine you are supposed to have lectures from 8 am to 10 am, but the lecturer just came to class and stayed for only 30 minutes, allowing 1hr30mins to go to waste. We see it as a normal thing but it shouldn’t be so. If a student dare asks a question, the lecturer replies “this is a university, you should learn on your own”. If it were that easy, maybe we all would have remained in our homes rather than travel far distances just to get to school. When students fail, society tries to demonize them rather than actually investigate the cause of failure. We never ask ourselves why Nigerian students perform excellently when they go to school abroad. It is simply because they have functioning systems and values. As attendance at lectures is mandatory, I strongly suggest that our universities set up mechanisms to help monitor the performance of lecturers in the classroom. Every student should get an opportunity to make suggestions to help improve our general education system. Our lecturers are too powerful, at the same time ineffective. Most of our lecturers want respect when they are not putting in the effort required.