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On The Doctoral Degree Requirement For Lecturing By Kola Ibrahim
Activist, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife
In Nigeria today, developing education has been one of the means of getting cheap popularity by government but every step the government take is always a wrong one. This is not unexpected given the fact that various Nigerian government at all levels, are not politically prepared to move the country forward. This is exactly what is happening through the new policy of the government, which is to compulsory doctoral degree as the basic requirement for teaching in our ivory towers come year 2009. This, according to government is meant to raise the standard of education. But this piecemeal approach is totally against the reality on ground.
In our tertiary institutions, there is already a huge shortfall in the number of teaching staff running to 54 percent. Aside this is the issue of lack of facilities – both teaching and research – to produce adequate postgraduate students that can take teaching jobs even if we ignore the fact that the teaching environment in our tertiary institutions are not friendly. For instance in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife (a first generation university), there is only one central teaching laboratory to take care of several hundreds of science oriented post-graduate students. Yet, the laboratory is poorly equipped while other departmental laboratories and workshops are virtually empty. Most of the research institutes on campus are not different as every buoyant researcher keep his own laboratory. Yet, most of the post-graduate students are either graduate assistant (another euphemism for causal lecturer) or unemployed; therefore they could not have had enough fund to undertake serious research works without resorting to shortcut. Government help that could have mitigated their plight is non-existent.
Some government apologists usually refer to grants from private sector. It is usually canvassed that if one undertakes research work that can be useful for the market, one can attract grant. Aside the fact this argument is nauseating, the grants are virtually non-existent. Are our informed government apologists canvassing that research work should be turned to commodity that has to be bought. This will be a bastardization of the idea of research. However, even if on a commodity basis, research works are not given attention by the so-called private sector and international organizations. This is not unexpected as the so-called private sector are almost non-existent while the multi-lateral organizations only give grants on projects and researches whose central principles have been determined a priori or which are most times in the non-science aspect. The only area where grants are given are in the oil and gas section which is majorly done to determine how to discover oil or mop up waste. They are researches meant to discover and develop the country. And the grants are sparingly given to few persons.
Summing up these conditions with the lack of facilities in our ivory towers, one must expect that any doctoral thesis must be critically reviewed. This does not mean that our lecturers are not doing their best, but as a result of terrible conditions created by government’s negligence, many of the researches are done in order to cross over the bridge of academics. The same scenarios are found at the graduate levels in which students undertake projects works just to graduate because there are no materials and facilities for them to work upon. All this has made Nigeria to be at the periphery of research in Africa. Most Nigerians who undertakes breath-taking research works do so outside our shores. Gone are the days when our postgraduate students and lecturers have all they need to undertake research works. Today, even our professors have been reduced to library of books and not epitome of research breakthrough. Our post-graduate students are facing barrage of attacks. Yet, post-graduate theses can not be undertaken without research work, even for those in the non-science.
As a result of these limiting factors, it takes nothing less than three to five years to get doctoral degrees which means that a to get a new set of PHD holders will be around 2010. With shortfall in teaching staff, it then clearly mean that a lot of lecturers, mostly the young ones will be thrown out of job and the standard of education plummeting as the few lecturers on ground will have to carry the burden of lecturing thousands of other students while many departments will be scrapped (as prescribed in the IMF-drafted NUSSIP programme of 2001). On the other way round, many institutions may start go dash out doctoral degrees at huge cost in order to retain lecturers and to get quick money. Many executive doctoral programmes will also develop which will further bastardize the already falling education.
Government on the other hand is not helping the matter with the meager amount being budgeted for education – 13 percent recurrent amounting to less than 8.8 percent total education budget – which cannot solve the least of the problems facing education as a whole, yet UNESCO recommends 26 percent for developing economy like Nigeria. A genuine pro-poor government that truly want to develop the country will massively develop the education facilities and provide access to millions of youths through free and qualitative education while employing thousands of academic staff, giving them facilities and time to undertake further programmes.
Unless the education workers’ unions and students’ movements take up this challenge, the future of Nigeria is doomed. The current government, milking from neo-liberal ideologies cannot develop this country despite all its grandstanding. It will be same of the old. This is why the labour unions must join force with other oppressed strata – market women, students’ movements, intellectuals, pensioners, youth, artisans, etc – and build a pan-Nigerian radical political platform for fight for a nationalized economy where the resources of the country can be developed unlike the current arrangement where our resources are being monopolized by few super-rich few. This is the only way to free the nation’s resources for public use.
Kola Ibrahim Activist, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife Member, Education Rights Campaign (ERC) |