The first part of this undercover investigation exposed how students of The Polytechnic Ibadan are being extorted by the academic staff of the institution, how they systematically pay for grades and how students are made to pay for lecture notes by their lecturers.
In this second part, Uthman SAMAD reveals how lecturers at the foremost polytechnic in Southwestern Nigeria charge fees for supervising final year projects of students.
FINAL year project or thesis is a partial requirement for the award of university or polytechnic degree or higher diploma in Nigeria. It requires rigorous academic research by undergraduates under the supervision of a lecturer assigned as a supervisor.
Once a student is certified by his lecturer to have carried out satisfactory academic research on a given researchable topic, he is deemed to have fulfilled the partial requirement for graduation—the other requirements being his academic performance—and must be found worthy also in character.
But at the Polytechnic Ibadan, this student-lecturer relationship is being traded for money. Here, final year students literally pay money into accounts of their supervisors and are allowed to duplicate other people’s work as their final year projects.
Students, graduate narrate their ordeal with supervisors
When Taiwo (surname withheld) was assigned to be supervised by his Head of Department, Mr. Makinde for his final year project, the final year student had looked forward to a rigorous engagement with his supervisor.
Taiwo, then an undergraduate in the Marketing Department, submitted Chapters 1-3 to his supervisor, hoping that the experienced lecturer would look through his work, make corrections and put him through what to be done next.
He was wrong. Mr. Makinde instead asked him to part N40,000 and get a full score for the project rather than writing and submitting in chapters.
“I can literarily tell you that I didn’t do anything like I didn’t submit a word like this, this lecturer pressurised me and I paid 40K(N40,000) soft,” he said, recalling his encounter with the supervisor back in school.
“I was placed under Mr. Makinde who was then the HOD. I could remember that I have started writing my project before Baba said he did not need my project. I have written like three chapters and I took it to him,” Taiwo reminisced.
“Aranse, there is nothing I will do with this, or are you telling me you are brilliant? I am not using all these? Your own payment is N40, 000. I have marked enough of things like this,” the supervisor told him when he submitted the first three chapters.
With this reality staring him in the face—N40, 000 or no project and graduation—he went looking for the money.
“I went to Lagos to hustle for the 40k, I paid and that’s all,” he said.
Another student from the Department of Public Administration who spoke under anonymity narrated his ordeal with another lecturer at the institution, one Mr. Ganiyu Hakeem, who teaches Community Development and Public Finance. He also doubles as the staff adviser for the department.
“All is done and dusted now. Project is a means some lecturers use to fill their hungry stomachs,” he said.
“My case was an example,” he started. “Firstly, I was surprised when my supervisor asked me to pay a certain amount for the project because he believed I can’t do it alone.”
In this case, the supervisor was operating through a proxy—a cyber café operator was his agent.
“Although we didn’t pay to him directly but he directed us to a café man and we paid the money to him,” he recalled.
“I later heard that the café man will take half of my money and then give the commission to the supervisor which is half of the money I paid which was N20, 000.”
Another student of Public Administration who was supervised by the same Mr. Akeem recounted how hard it was to pass through a supervisor without paying.
“The first day we met him, he frankly told us to pay N30, 000 through a café man. It’s an individual project and not group, so everyone carried their burden. I heard later that he eventually pegged the amount to be paid at N20, 000 per student.”
I understood the meaning of the word ‘hard’, he said.
He would not attend to me daily for months, yet he gave priority and attention to those that made the payment.
“He asked those that were willing to pay to a café man beside the Music Department. So they just go there to collect the project and submit chapter-by-chapter.”
When contacted for comments through a telephone call, Mr. Ganiyu Akeem denied the allegation.
“There’s never been such since I have been working and I will never do that,” he responded angrily.
“The first part of your investigative report has caused a lot of trouble on this campus because I had this same information from somebody, I have been waiting for you till now.”
Livid with anger, he hurled abuses and curses on the reporter as a result of what he says were the bad consequences of the first part of this reporter’s expose.
“I have been issued queries because of this same issue. There’s no reason asking me about this again”
“If you don’t want to die untimely, leave me alone, don’t ask me anything about this again. This is no more a news. I don’t know anything about what you are talking about, I have never collected a dime from anybody,” he said and ended the call.
Akintunde, a graduate of Computer Engineering Department of the institution also shared his own story.
He painted a sorry picture of how he and three other members of the group were directed by their Electronic Package lecturer who was their final year supervisor to meet one of the café shop owners on the south campus market of the institution.
“I graduated last year, just a session ago. Our Electronic Package lecturer, Mr. Adebisi was our supervisor then and we were just four in number. We didn’t waste any time. He directed us to meet a café man at the South campus market to get a project done,” Akintunde narrated.
“The project was about ‘gas leak detector’, so the man did the hardest part of it which is hardware building, and he collected N40, 000.
The student said the sum was shared by the four of them at N10,000 each. We later wrote the write-up on the hardware ourselves.”
In another interview, Mr. Adebisi of the Department of Engineering also denied the allegation levelled against him.
He said :“ I don’t understand what you are talking about. We don’t give projects to students. I don’t know any café around Music Department, and I don’t collect money from any student, so I don’t understand what you are talking about.”
All efforts to reach Mr. Makinde of the Marketing Department proofed abortive as his number was not reachable throughout the period of filing this investigation.

http://saharareporters.com/2019/10/05/inside-polytechnic-where-academic-corruption-thrives-part-2