If all the allegations about the manner of rigging that took place during the last Presidential election, particularly manipulation of figures at collation centres, supervised by eminent professors of universities from the nation’s Ivory Towers, are anything to go by, there is no wonder then why Nigerian Universities have become breeding grounds for examination fraudsters, “Yahoo Yahoo boys” and other immoral activities.
This is because, a monkey can only give birth to a monkey and fraudsters must simply replicate themselves.
Many citizens smelt a rat when a few days to the Presidential election, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), a group that had been on strike for months over various categories of unmet demands, chief of which is unpaid salary arrears and allowances of university teachers, announced one night that it had settled with the Federal Government and had called off the strike with immediate effect.
The ASUU leaders that night gleefully announced that the universities had, by virtue of the development, been ordered to reopen forthwith.
One could see through the lies and shenanigans oozing out from the very mouths of those who were supposed to be the conscience of the nation.
They lied that the universities were going to resume at a time when it was not safe for undergraduates to be on campus for any meaningful academic activity. It was a time individuals and organisations were advising parents and guardians to put an eye on their children and wards, to avoid them being used as cannon fodders by desperate politicians.
The shenanigans played out at a time when ASUU leaders knew that many of their university chancellors and professors were going to serve as INEC ad-hoc staff in various capacities.
So, the question was, who was ASUU reopening the schools for? This is why it has been difficult to dismiss the allegation that the vice chancellors of universities and other professors who worked as INEC returning officers or collation officers were heavily compromised.
It is being alleged that they tampered with figures and allowed themselves to be involved in different categories of electoral malfeasance.
“Some of them, in their alleged bid to doctor the figures in the original result sheet, struggled before the camera to read such figures out even though they were the ones who computed the results at the state level. They pretended to have suddenly gone blind. It was so ridiculous that even after providing ‘ruler and light’ as requested by one of the returning officers (a professor and vice chancellor) to enable him see well, he continued to stammer like a child learning to read.
“At that moment, that professor was struggling with his conscience and that was why he found it very difficult to face the world. He only mustered the courage after he had been told by the National Chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, to step down and take time off to look at the result again. That may have also afforded him the opportunity to sip some brandy in order to make himself high enough for the hatchet man’s job,” Patience Agwu, a school proprietress in Lagos, said.
Although these professors who preside over institutions of higher learning where all manner of courses are being offered, were supposed to encourage research into how best to conduct elections in Nigeria, from what transpired during the collation of the results, observers speak in tandem that the academics are morally in-equipped to champion researches that could move Nigeria away from the crude way of conducting elections.
Recall that it was Attahiru Jega, the immediate past chairman of the INEC that introduced, in 2015, the use of university vice-chancellors as returning officers.
Jega had explained that he settled for them because they had a track record of credibility.
“We were looking for people with integrity; and we have no doubt that there are many people with integrity in the Nigerian university system.
“So, it is like a ready-made constituency to get the kind of people we needed for the job to be done,” he said.
According to Jega, “We know that anybody who has risen in the system to become a vice-chancellor will not, for anything, damage his or her reputation by pandering to the wishes of politicians.”
Today, it does not appear that the university professors have acquitted themselves well or have lived up to that expectation.
“Vice Chancellors and senior lecturers in our universities have since joined the rat race. They are now more interested in their pockets than they are in whatever research that can move the country forward,” an analyst, who craved anonymity, said.
The analyst further said: “Many nations develop through researches incubated in their Ivory Towers. But the Nigeria’s story is pathetic. Nobody is interested in developing our institutions. You are carrying out a research work and those who should supervise you are busy placing all manner of monetary demands and extorting you. Even at that, you don’t even see them. You find out that a project that should take six months to complete now lasts for two to three years because of the nonchalant attitude of lecturers. It is a shame.”
Patrick Osho, a trained physician, does not believe that the eggheads have justified the reason behind their consideration for the INEC sensitive job.
“Professor Jega was very right when he made the decision. He thought he was still dealing with university professors of the ‘80s and ‘90s who were only mindful of their calling as teachers and cared less about the rat race going on outside the walls of the university environment,” Osho said.
According to him, “In the late ‘80s to early ‘90s when I was in the university, lecturers were contented. They were not interested in the huge amount of money their mates were making outside. They were satisfied with their old brands of cars and their not-well-furnished quarters. You could feel the air of contentment around them. At that time, they invested their all in the education of their children, most of who passed through the institutions where their fathers were lecturing. Contentment was their watchword.
“But today, the professors have joined the rat race. They prey on their students and do all manner of things to live big. They now compete with politicians, even though they are aware that most times, the sources of funds are illegal. They now operate on the principle of ‘if you can’t beat them, you join them.’ What we see now is unnecessary and unhealthy competition. We now see university lecturers having two or three of their children in the best universities abroad, all at the same time. And in their struggle to get money to maintain such lush lifestyles, they lose their integrity by engaging in all manner of untoward deals. I think, honestly, that the university professors have lost their innocence. There may be a few exceptions, though.”
Although the Vice Chancellors and other university professors that were deployed for the INEC job did not serve in their states, allegations were also rife that they were compromised even before they got posted.
“Don’t forget that they operate as a cult. The INEC Chairman is a professor and don’t forget that they are all from federal universities. They know themselves. It does not matter where they were sent to officiate; in the era of telephone, communication is easy. So, it is infantile to believe that just because a lecturer or VC was moved from say, Lagos to go and serve in Edo State he would be non-partisan if he had been compromised beforehand. He receives instructions from those who recruited him and is instructed on what to do there, finish,” Osho volunteered.
A columnist, Abimbola Adelakun, writing in one of the national dailies a few days ago, noted that it was disappointing watching some of the professor-returning officers, stammering.
“The other rankling part was watching the university vice chancellors, who served as returning officers, read out the figures, some of them stumbling in the execution of this rather banal task. If they could not competently perform the easy chore of reading out numbers, we should wonder how much diligence and intelligent oversight they contributed to the mission of the collation of the results,” Adelakun said.
It is her submission that “After several election cycles, we should have realised now that the premise of using academics in the electoral process is in itself inherently flawed. It is understandable why Jega, a reputable academic himself, would imagine that plugging his colleagues across Nigerian universities into that role would improve the integrity of the electoral process. Academics are supposed to be an embodiment of charisma and intellect.”
Chinaka Ndu
Ndu, a public affairs commentator, writes from Lagos
