EKSU’s N100 award prize exposes Nigerian public varsities with faulty reward system

Nigeria’s public universities will probably have more students excelling every year if they review their reward systems as much as their tuition fees.

A searchlight beam at some government-owned universities in the country after Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti (EKSU) awarded a cash prize of N100 to Bamisaye Tosin Tope, the best graduating student in the Department of Civil Engineering of the institution, shows Nigeria’s public institutions have a faulty reward system.

In a research work on the effect of rewards and motivation on student achievement by Lori Kay Baranek and submitted to Grand Valley State University, a reward is seen as a veritable tool for motivating students to perform better in their studies.

“If they would only try harder, then they would do better on tests, take more risks, or earn better grades,” it stated. This implies Nigerian public universities stand a better chance to improve performance level if their rewards could address some students’ fears.

These fears include surviving after graduation in a country harbouring more than 90 million extremely poor inhabitants, and having almost no job prospect for graduates with classes of degree below a first class as the unemployment rate hit a record-high of 23.1 percent as at the third quarter of 2018.

Little wonder why students in Nigerian private universities are more likely to excel academic-wise than their peers in government-owned institutions, no thanks to an age-long and poor reward system that is fuelling disregard to achieving academic excellence in the country’s public institutions.

For instance, while over 20 million Nigerians who were within working age and actively looking for jobs could not secure one as at September 2018, all the 72 students out of 1,042 graduates who bagged first-class degrees in Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti (ABUAD) at the institution’s sixth convocation ceremonies in 2018 were given automatic employment.

“It has always been the culture of the founder, Aare Afe Babalola, to give automatic jobs to first-class students,” Michael Ajisafe, ABUAD’s vice-chancellor, said while delivering his speech at the event. “These 72 will benefit from the gesture.’’

The story is not different in Covenant University where every first-class graduate is eligible for a Master’s Degree Scholarship and a job, according to a source in the institution who pleaded anonymity.

However, state-owned EKSU has been awarding a cash prize of N100 under the Ado-Ekiti Patriotic Front Prize Award to the best graduating student in its Department of Civil Engineering for more than 30 years until a letter to the effect went viral, prompting an upward review of the prize.

“That award was instituted in the university more than 30 years ago,” Akin Arogundade, EKSU registrar, told BusinessDay by phone. “The school Senate has reviewed the value of the prizes in this category to a minimum of N50,000 for corporate bodies and N100,000 for university prizes.”

Checks by BusinessDay revealed that besides EKSU, other government-owned universities are also culpable of the act. In the University of Ibadan, several awards with cash prizes not more than N200 funded through endowments were found on the institution’s website.

Among the award prizes are Peter Ajose Alli annual prize of N100 to the best student in each department in the Faculty of Social Sciences; Aboyade Prize of N200 for the best doctoral candidate in Economics and N150 to the best graduating student with First Class Honours in Economics, and Mrs. Juliana Jokotola Senbanjo Memorial Prize of N100 awarded annually to the best student in Religious Studies.