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.
Read More : FACT CHECK: Did Ekiti varsity award best graduating student N100? Yes!
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.
Others include S.O. Odeyinde Prize of N50 and a silver cup for the best graduating student in Field Geological Mapping; Samuel Adewumi Senbanjo Memorial Prize, an annual prize of N100 awarded to the best student in Computer Science; the Nigerian Breweries Prizes in Biochemistry and Chemistry, two annual prizes of N100 each awarded to the best graduating students in Biochemistry and Chemistry, among others.
At the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), the School of Management Technology (SMAT) has a list of convocation prizes awarding N5,000 and N10,000 per year for the best graduating students in different programmes, according to BusinessDay findings on the university’s website.
For the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), a snapshot of the university’s convocation brochure seen online alleges that it awarded N1,000 each as Dean’s Award to its best graduating students in 2018.
Meanwhile, Accra Brewery Limited (ABL), a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABInBev), the world’s leading brewer, rewarded Madina Salihu, the best graduating student in Food Process Engineering Department for the 2016/2017 academic year in the University of Ghana with a brand-new laptop, GHC5,000 (over N330,000) and an eight-week internship opportunity at the firm.
Interestingly, winner of the 4th episode of Nigeria’s reality television show ‘Big Brother Naija’ is expected to win a total prize worth N60 million, one third more than N45 million worth of prizes presented to Miracle Igbokwe who won the previous season.
For the other participants of the show, ambassadorial positions for brands, financial gifts, cars, among other tangible prizes that are capable of spurring interests towards entertainment industry come handy at the end of the show.
These may not be unconnected with the increasingly poor performance of students recorded across the public universities compared with institutions owned by private bodies.
Out of 7,577 students that graduated from Nigeria’s premier University of Ibadan in the 2016/2017 academic session, only 201, representing 2.65 percent, graduated with first-class degrees, according to data compiled by BusinessDay.
The proportion is worse at the University of Benin with 1.62 percent, and much worse at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where 1.49 percent had first-class degrees at the institution’s 2018 convocation ceremony.
A similar trend was observed in EKSU where only 49 out of 9,796 graduating students bagged first class honour degrees at its 24th convocation ceremonies, implying for every 200 graduates only 1 first-class degree holder was recorded for the 2016/2017 academic session.
These figures compare with Covenant University’s 13.6 percent having recorded 215 first-class graduates out of 1,580 graduating students for the 2018/2019 academic session; 6.9 percent in ABUAD; and 6.4 percent recorded by Redeemers University.
A positive change of this paltry ratio in public universities is not in the offing if the government continues to devote less than 10 percent of its total budget for education and retain reward prizes which do not reflect current economic reality amid Nigeria’s rising unemployment rate and booming entertainment industry.
OLUWASEGUN OLAKOYENIKAN
