@poster, never you compare the quality of education now and then. What is obtainable in the Nigeria Universities now and when your so called Chikelu Mba obtained his Phd (1992) let alone his first degree say early 80’s.
Perhaps if he had over 200 classmates, over 12 roomates in a 10 by 10 room, he would have understood what Nigerian students are going through. Did he experience incessant strike actions, poor infrastructure, poorly equipped library, lecturers demand for money and sex in exchange to pass the students.

I don’t think Chikelu Mba experienced all these. He probably went to university when they were only 3 in the class, one person in a room with room attendants to wash their clothes and so on.

Amidst all these constraints, I think our graduates are doing very well considering the quality of education they receive today. How many lecturers do researches on new technologies and innovations. They simply give you what they are taught in the 80’s. and you expect the students to be of same level with their counterpart in US and Europe. No, it doesn’t happen that way. A monkey will give birth to monkey not lion.

It pains my heart when people say that the standard of education has fallen. I totally disagree. Considering the yardstick for measuring the quality of education, I think the standard of education is very high now otherwise why is it that our students perform very well in schools abroad. Its simply because they have all they needed.

Homonide:

I quite agree with most of the comments i've read on this thread, especially those of ajanlekoko and eluala. However, as much as i agree, i want every1 to realize that Nigerian graduates of today do not have the same opportunies that our fathers had in the 70's and 80's.

Thus, it is increasingly difficult for us(because i'm 1 too) to get our dream jobs and use our GOD-given intellect and potentialities.
Simply put, the environment in Nigeria is stifling not encouraging @ all.

Hmm, agreed.
I think very soon, when activities pick up in energy, power, and the financial sector, that will further stimulate activities in the other sectors, and there will be a plethora of opportunities again for Nigerian graduates. Demand in the economy will drive a renewed zeal for academics, and even the universities will become competitive again. Let's be optimistic.

Don Umeh:

It pains my heart when people say that the standard of education has fallen. I totally disagree. Considering the yardstick for measuring the quality of education, I think the standard of education is very high now otherwise why is it that our students perform very well in schools abroad. Its simply because they have all they needed.

Where did you get the impression that our students (that studied in Nigeria) perform very well in schools abroad?

It would help if you define what you term as "perform very well" when answering the question.

AjanleKoko:

Hmm, agreed.
I think very soon, when activities pick up in energy, power, and the financial sector, that will further stimulate activities in the other sectors, and there will be a plethora of opportunities again for Nigerian graduates. Demand in the economy will drive a renewed zeal for academics, and even the universities will become competitive again. Let's be optimistic.

Things will get better. Nigeria is getting better despite people not realising it because they are impatient (which can be a positive thing though) or they think change takes place overnight.

No one would have thought back in the 90s that Nigeria can ever have the likes of Fashola, Donald Duke etc as governors. It would have been Alao-Akalas and Yerimas across all states before.

No one would have thought the likes of Ribadu would even have a reasonable shot at presidency. It would have been criminals like IBB and Atiku as favourites without question.

As we get better governance from people of the right calibre in most areas, things will improve. Maybe one day in the next 20 years, we will be like Malaysia _{Yes, we have sunk too badly that being at that level is a far and more realistic dream}.

Such generalization about dt less worth of 9ja university degrees these days gets me nervous wenever I hear it. Please, good friends, dnt swallow hook, line and sinker everytyn u hear d media portray as d state of affairs of our erudition. We're nt quack graduates. We may nt have had d best environment 4 learning n our tertiary institutions, but it does nt sign us as half-baked. It does nt supress d die hard spirit of a typical 9jan. Even in dt lamentable situation, he is optimistic, while going d extra mile of doing wat is within his reach @ providing d little he can to make a difference.

I want to commend @ ds juncture all dose who have replied ds thread asserting d 'can do spirit of 9jans'. It reminded me of a friend who recently travelled 2 India 4 a certificate course. He's a 9ja graduate 4rm FUTO. He exhibited ds 'optimistic and can do spirit of d 9jan' and was on top of every oda person. It might interest u dt he may nt have grad wt 1st Class here n 9ja, bt he had it outside 9ja. Come 2 tnk of wat will be d level of dos dt grad wt 1st Class. They'll b geniuses of d 1st order all over d world.

Please, we are nt half - baked graduates. If odas say they are, personally, I'm not. Bt, they have not said they are. I am a bona fide 9ja graduate, and I believe I can compete favourably, and even assert myself over and above my mates and beat them hands down anywhere d world over, any day, and @ any time.

Greatest 9jan graduates! Great

Aluka, are you in University yet?

If, yes, what level?

The situation can be likened to a systemic epidemic that requires careful solution. The first thing to be done is that education must be given priority in our national budget. Secondly, our politicians must be banned from sending their children to school abroad. While this may sound funny, i strongly believe that it would help in stemming this unfortunate slide.

sshalom:

The situation can be likened to a systemic epidemic that requires careful solution. The first thing to be done is that education must be given priority in our national budget. Secondly, our politicians must be banned from sending their children to school abroad. While this may sound funny, i strongly believe that it would help in stemming this unfortunate slide.

I pray this happens in my lifetime.

san26dy:

I pray this happens in my lifetime.

I pray so too.

Very nivce write up eulala,your mode of thinking basically epitomises a whitemans way of think(not trying to put we black people down) but even here in the states the way most African americans think sometimes show you why a lot of them get stuck in a situation.wwas thinking of what to add to what u said and basically i had nothing to add
good words

This man graduated less than 20 years ago from a Nigerian university and got all those international jobs on that basis. He has no foreign academic degrees.

I am just wondering how far the youths of today's Nigeria who study there can go, given the level of bastardization of our university system.

He got those jobs based on experience, and his publications in research. Obviously when you produce such top results it would be foolish for an organization to consider what school and in what country you attended years ago.

I guess it is the same thing in academics. Ivy League schools in the US and Canada recruit 1st class graduates from Nigeria as teaching/research assistants come postgrad students.

Only Nigerian engineering students actually. I think professors have caught on to the fact that a lot of people studying engineering in Nigeria are at the top of the curve in rote memorization lol. However its very very very very rare to find Nigerian students at Ivy Phds since these are not the best at engineering, and most are very selective in the US. However there are lot of Nigerian graduates at MIT- their Chem Eng dept has a couple i think.

Also the majority of idiots congregate in social science courses in Nigeria, so there is really no standard for the program to keep anyways.

You will never find a Nigerian in a hard science PhD (theoretical chemistry, quantum particle/biophysics/astrophysics and all those difficult science names) straight from Nigeria.

Nigerian education has its merits- It teaches you how to cram stuff you dont even understand.

@SEFAGO,

The truth is that Nigerian Universities like every other University in the world teaches the student how to think. They teach you everything really - memorise, conceptualise, imagine, create, name it just everything. The only thing we lack here in Nigeria are the teaching aids like good labs, workshops, libraries etc.

The role of the student is to study - dig deeper, research, find out more, exercise the brain (which must include some memorisation), that is why you have to be tested for a sound aptitude at the end of the day. The University provides a variety of learning opportunities/methods. The individual ought to understand what works for him/her - then maximise value in that area. That is why the most important thing for achieving success is understanding yourself. Some people call it self realisation and others call it self actualisation. If a student chooses to use only the craming aspect of learning, then that's his/her choice. Like I said before, that route enables the acquisition of the certificate only. When it is time to demonstrate sound mental aptitude, they fail woefully.

That's why you see a lot of people without jobs yet others have multiple options in the same environment. Again I must point out that there are good jobs for good people. I agree there are some people getting good jobs based on 'connection', but most multinationals still reserve 90% of the slots for the best usually recruited through a very rigorous process. Let's quit the negative, complaining mentality. You must prove that you are the best and good for the job. These businesses only give their best positions to the best not based on sentiments. You must earn it. Nobody just gives it.

@Also the majority of idiots congregate in social science courses in Nigeria,

I don't think it is proper to use such language on others irrespective of how agitated you may be. It smacks of disrespect for others and could easily lead to some misunderstanding of your noble intentions.

SEFAGO:

He got those jobs based on experience, and his publications in research. Obviously when you produce such top results it would be foolish for an organization to consider what school and in what country you attended years ago.

Only Nigerian engineering students actually. I think professors have caught on to the fact that a lot of people studying engineering in Nigeria are at the top of the curve in rote memorization lol. However its very very very very rare to find Nigerian students at Ivy Phds since these are not the best at engineering, and most are very selective in the US. However there are lot of Nigerian graduates at MIT- their Chem Eng dept has a couple i think.
You will never find a Nigerian in a hard science PhD (theoretical chemistry, quantum particle/biophysics/astrophysics and all those difficult science names) straight from Nigeria.
Nigerian education has its merits- It teaches you how to cram stuff you dont even understand.

These are the right kind of areas we should look at before any reasonable assessment on the quality of Nigerian graduates. It should not be about supposedly brilliant bachelor's degree holders but about actually how many PhD holders the Nigerian system, at home or abroad produces. There is more to learning than just rote memorization. Brilliant students no doubt but are they learning the right way?
However just by going on the posts on Nairaland it is pretty obvious that American high school and college students far surpass their Nigerian counterparts in original and critical thinking.

Aluka3588:

Please, we are nt half - baked graduates. If odas say they are, personally, I'm not. Bt, they have not said they are. I am a bona fide 9ja graduate, and I believe I can compete favourably, and even assert myself over and above my mates and beat them hands down anywhere d world over, any day, and @ any time. Greatest 9jan graduates! Great

Nobody said nything about being a half-baked graduate but you can't expect to come out with the above sweeping statements without being challenged.
What's your discipline by the way and what Nigerian university did you graduate from ??

tensor777:

However just by going on the posts on Nairaland it is pretty obvious that American high school and college students  far surpass their Nigerian counterparts in original and critical thinking.

Without a shred of a doubt!

I was actually thinking about this a couple of days ago.

The likes of Bawomolo and chiogo demonstrate higher intellectual qualities when discussing issues (hardly any conjectures) and are good, willing listeners (when evidence is put forth that proofs they are wrong) than those of the similar age that grew up in Nigeria who would argue sillily, boisterously and turn to "I will die arguing" even when their arguments has been proven weak.

One of the reasons I liked Bawo and never ever used a bad word against him was his intellect and I observed when I proved him wrong in a debate, he took it well and learnt even though his conviction has not changed.

Sometimes I read posts of some Nigerians on NL and I almost tear my hair out thinking if any thought was put into it at all. Arguments are based on conjectures, unreliable rumours, emotions, poor analytical thinking and subjectivity. That is why I keep on harping that what universities or teacher's college produced these guys.

Very few impress me on NL and when I get to know these few, they are likely to be the ones doing very well in Nigeria career-wise.

tensor777:

Nobody said nything about being a half-baked graduate but you can't expect to come out with the above sweeping statements without being challenged.
What's your discipline by the way and what Nigerian university did you graduate from ??

I did not even spot the highlighted as I struggle to read all these stuuuupid textglish and hardly ever bother to read the entire post, hence my question asking him if (s)he was in university yet and at what level.

I asked because I wanted to use him as an example. Now I know he is a "graduate", I can progress.

This is a graduate that believes he can compete with those of the same level any part of the world and trying to convince people he is not a quack or half-baked but yet wrote THREE paragraphs on a very serious discussion in textspeak. That is the self-presentation he felt adequate to demonstrate his qualities?

Utter intellectual laziness! I can understand if someone writes 2 sentences in textspeak but THREE PARAGRAPHS? And you are a graduate not a pubescent/teenager?

I was soooooooo irritated I had to ask him:

Sagamite:

Aluka, are you in University yet?

If, yes, what level?

He really needs to look at the way the likes of Ajanlekoko and Eluala write.

tensor777:

These are the right kind of areas we should look at before any reasonable assessment on the quality of Nigerian graduates. It should not be about supposedly brilliant bachelor's degree holders but about actually how many PhD holders the Nigerian system, at home or abroad produces. There is more to learning than just rote memorization. Brilliant students no doubt but are they learning the right way?
However just by going on the posts on Nairaland it is pretty obvious that American high school and college students far surpass their Nigerian counterparts in original and critical thinking.

You mean the same american high school students who cant point out pakistan on a map. really. the same students that kill their classmates with uzis and pump-action guns. I beg to differ.

Sagamite:

I did not even spot the highlighted as I struggle to read all these stuuuupid textglish and hardly ever bother to read the entire post, hence my question asking him if (s)he was in university yet and at what level.

I asked because I wanted to use him as an example. Now I know he is a "graduate", I can progress.

This is a graduate that believes he can compete with those of the same level any part of the world and trying to convince people he is not a quack or half-baked but yet wrote THREE paragraphs on a very serious discussion in textspeak. That is the self-presentation he felt adequate to demonstrate his qualities?

Utter intellectual laziness! I can understand if someone writes 2 sentences in textspeak but THREE PARAGRAPHS? And you are a graduate not a pubescent/teenager?

I was soooooooo irritated I had to ask him:

He really needs to look at the way the likes of Ajanlekoko and Eluala write.

this is an informal forum, there's no need to be all hoity-toity about language. am sure a detailed audit of all your posts on this site would reveal some that fall even lower below the fold than this specific post you are referring to .

enough said.

kodewrita:

this is an informal forum, there's no need to be all hoity-toity about language.

No excuse for such poor display and mental laziness if one is a quality graduate and not a teenager.

THREE bloody paragraphs of textspeak.

A well-baked grad posting SERIOUSLY on forum would take pride in his writing in regards to presentation and quality of thought demonstrated. Such qualities are instilled in one as a HABIT when they pass through quality higher education institutions. A few mispelling or little lines of poor grammatical constructs can be acceptable but to load all that as personal standard is ridiculous (more so when trying to express that you are of "quality".

I can GUARANTEE YOU that you will never see an Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, LSE etc graduate EVER write like that.

kodewrita:

am sure a detailed audit of all your posts on this site would reveal some that fall even lower below the fold than this specific post you are referring to .

enough said.

Please have a go!!!

There are tons of post from me as sample to pick from.

I will love you to have a go.

Sagamite, does it really matter 4 u to knw? Why do u ask?

Sagamite, sometimes one has got to shorting his words. May be use short hand to make due with the little amount of time available to him. It's an informal setting you know. Other people use it as well. So, I dont know why it is your problem.

Aluka3588:

Sagamite, sometimes one has got to shorting his words. May be use short hand to make due with the little amount of time available to him. It's an informal setting you know. Other people use it as well. So, I dont know why it is your problem.

I completely disagree.

That is just an excuse. It is not because of short of time, it is because of habit.

If anyone did a temporal assessment of writing what you wrote in 3 paragraphs, you could not have saved up to a minute over if you have written it out correctly and efficiently. Less time still, as I think it actually takes some effort to elect what shorthand textspeak "wrd 2 use", if like me, you are a novice to such poor writing, which will nullify any time saving.

And I am sure if you are being true to yourself, you were not in such a rush to save a mere 1 min, you did it because you are part of the culture that is used to textspeaking from sending too much text. Some use it sometimes if they are writing just a few (1 or 2) sentences {acceptable} or for 1 or 2 frequent words in a sentence {acceptable} but your use of it is EXTENSIVE {unacceptable}, yours suggest an underlying issue that needs to be addressed. It is a bad habit that has become a core habit.

Other people use it as well, yeah!!! If the use is like how YOU used it, that is a sign of the problem we are discussing here. If you look at the background of those that use it (and are not kids), you will see that majority are not part of the 10% quality graduates we want Nigerian society to churn out.

Search for the following people on NL that are Nigerian university educated but I have observed are part of the 10% and see if they write like that: tkb417, AjanleKoko, Jarus, debosky, dayokanu, oyb, spikedcylinder, tubabie etc.

Sagamite, take it or leave it. It is a short hand kind of writing. It should not be a basis for assessment.

Sagamite:

Without a shred of a doubt!

I was actually thinking about this a couple of days ago.

The likes of Bawomolo and chiogo demonstrate higher intellectual qualities when discussing issues (hardly any conjectures) and are good, willing listeners (when evidence is put forth that proofs they are wrong) than those of the similar age that grew up in Nigeria who would argue sillily, boisterously and turn to "I will die arguing" even when their arguments has been proven weak.

One of the reasons I liked Bawo and never ever used a bad word against him was his intellect and I observed when I proved him wrong in a debate, he took it well and learnt even though his conviction has not changed.

Sometimes I read posts of some Nigerians on NL and I almost tear my hair out thinking if any thought was put into it at all. Arguments are based on conjectures, unreliable rumours, emotions, poor analytical thinking and subjectivity. That is why I keep on harping that what universities or teacher's college produced these guys.

Very few impress me on NL and when I get to know these few, they are likely to be the ones doing very well in Nigeria career-wise.

in addition to your post responding to a writer's piece should be carried out without emotion. i believe majority of the people who post here write with emotions, possess bags of angst, which for some reason this is the place to drop it. learning, which should be the principle reason for sharing opinions on a thread is dourly lacking here. logical and reasonable thinking is also sadly lacking. we should use this excellent forum to learn new things, not just throw barbs on each other or force opinions down others throats. anytime i come here i learn from at least one person, and today that person is you. lets use nairaland as a learning tool, and when we are wrong lets think outside the box and accept change. after all even the best of the best people and organisations practise what is known as continuous improvement process or what the Japnese call Kaizen [which means change for the better or improvement].

Sagamite:

Where did you get the impression that our students (that studied in Nigeria) perform very well in schools abroad?

It would help if you define what you term as "perform very well" when answering the question.

Things will get better. Nigeria is getting better despite people not realising it because they are impatient (which can be a positive thing though) or they think change takes place overnight.

No one would have thought back in the 90s that Nigeria can ever have the likes of Fashola, Donald Duke etc as governors. It would have been Alao-Akalas and Yerimas across all states before.

No one would have thought the likes of Ribadu would even have a reasonable shot at presidency. It would have been criminals like IBB and Atiku as favourites without question.

As we get better governance from people of the right calibre in most areas, things will improve. Maybe one day in the next 20 years, we will be like Malaysia _{Yes, we have sunk too badly that being at that level is a far and more realistic dream}.

there have been positive changes in Nigeria, at least when i visited, albeit 2 states [lagos and FCT]. being patient for success or general improvements is good, because the alternative is disastrous. it will come. i would rather die an optimist and criticise the negative things, than die a pessimist and still criticise the negative things. positive change is hard work, and the cliche that Rome wasnt built in a day couldnt be truer. it is true that some states have sterling leaders governing them, and even though we would like this to be holistic across board, we can applaud the few gentlement who have stamped their place in history. all we have to do is positively encourage those making a good difference and contribute in our own little way to improve our country, wherever we are.

i meant impatient. also meant gentlemen.

A young girl asked for a lift while i was in a hold-up; i obliged her. After getting in, i asked why she did not try the other route, she said: "that place is worster".   On further probing, she claimed to have A1 in Maths and various other excellent result in 7 other subjects.

The truth however is that this is not the typical example of the current Nigerian Student/Graduate. This is only good for the press to satisfy the dictum "bad stories sells".

I can tell you this: The Nigerian graduate today earns his/her degree with sweat and blood in spite of the bad press.

Our current students are overloaded and underfunded to deliver under stiffer conditions: First, the WASC/NECO is amalgamation of O and A levels. Most teachers are underpaid and over loaded. All courses now have average of 200 students per class. A non-Nigerian friend who holds 1st and 2nd degrees (Total of 4 from Canada, UK and US) screamed when he saw the Elect/Elect Syllabus of Covenant University.

I agree that the conditions are bad and i have interviewed a few terrible guys, but Nigeria is still managing to produce great guys that i have met in various places in the world. Just like in our time (15 in class), you had bad guys and good guys. The Certificates only attempts to demonstrate an individual's ability to undergo academic rigor, but in spite of the horrible conditions in our educational system, people's innate abilities would still carry them far in the world. The bad examples have been magnified by the higher number of school enrollment in Nigeria.

By the way, there is so much your country can do for you: US is not among the first 5 among the best in Secondary School Maths tests in the last 10 years. Check out the rate at which Nigerians are obtaining foreign Certifications without bribe!

What should you do as an individual: Immediately you graduate, determine and work hard at becoming an expert in a particular vocation. Someday, your expertise would be required somewhere in the world. I can assure you, i believe in Nigerian graduate, because i know people said worse things about Indian graduates in the 80's and 90's, for example, you could pick Degree on the street!

I'd say they were worth the name around late 90's at most. Education starts from home when one is still very young. If you're parents are well cultured then good for you . . . . if they aren't then good luck and welcome to the world of many Nigerian PhD holders that can't speak nor write well.

SEFAGO:

Only Nigerian engineering students actually. I think professors have caught on to the fact that a lot of people studying engineering in Nigeria are at the top of the curve in rote memorization lol. However its very very very very rare to find Nigerian students at Ivy Phds since these are not the best at engineering, and most are very selective in the US. However there are lot of Nigerian graduates at MIT- their Chem Eng dept has a couple i think.

Also the majority of idiots congregate in social science courses in Nigeria, so there is really no standard for the program to keep anyways.

You will never find a Nigerian in a hard science PhD (theoretical chemistry, quantum particle/biophysics/astrophysics and all those difficult science names) straight from Nigeria.

Hmm.
But in the 60s/70s/80s, we were probably the most represented on the African continent in terms of Phds in core science and engineering. All those profs and senior lecturers/research fellows when I was at uni in the 90s, there were more than enough UK/US trained Phds and Dscs (MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Imperial, London, etc.).

Now that most of those chaps are dead or retired, there's no new generation to replace them. I guess with the successive government failures, the decay in the larger society, not to mention the absence of any serious scientific activity in Nigeria, just killed any interest they had in growing the next generation of Nigerian scientists. Hence the copy and paste approach we know today.

A snippet from a former UI professor, Niyi Osundare, now based in the US' intellectually stimulating interview with Sahara Reporters. It says everything I have been saying. The bit about education which is relevant to this topic is below, I just copied the culture one as well as it is something I have been saying as well too.

The education part of the extract highlights how our so-called graduates cannot write or even speak in the right English. Now some of them are trying to even degrade further by taking delight in writing in textspeak. Those type are lucky they are not my child/ward, the kind of slap I will give them will make them be hearing the sound of volcano eruptions in their ears for years.

. . . . . This is the tragedy of our contemporary Nigeria, Africa and the world! As I said earlier about the Africans in exile, they are neither this nor that. We have fallen between the existential cracks of modern living. It is a very important point you’ve made because I’m also an applied linguist. This is something so crucial to the sociolinguistics of contemporary Africa. My Ph.D. work was in the area of bilingualism and biculturalism. There is nothing wrong with bilingualism if by that we mean the ability to know, use and master at least two languages with equal competence. That is I think what we call co-ordinate bilingualism. But problems arise because what we have in Africa is a situation of scrambled bilingualism. The indigenous language has been discouraged in the school system and the social system. We are in the age of ‘Hey Junior, come and say hello to Uncle.’ People think that is chic, trendy, it’s the in-thing. [Bloody reetards]

An African has a son and names him Junior. You are not an American. The typical contemporary Nigerian idea about culture is a kind of amnesia; you have to forget what you have, throw it away, discard it, stigmatize it and then labour, crave for something that is abroad, which your hand can never reach. So, many of us have thrown Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Edo, Urhobo, Efik away. But we’ve not been able to grasp English. Many of our people have fallen into a kind of cultural and linguistic crack. It’s a terrible chasm; they know neither English nor the indigenous language. If you don’t have the mastery of a language, how can you write in it? I used to tell students in my Creative Writing class in UI (I used to restrict the class to 10 students) that Creative Writing is not open to everybody.

I’m not being elitist or dictatorial. No, if you don’t come to this world with a sense of smell, nobody can teach you how to smell. If you don’t know how to respond to music, nobody can teach you. It has to be somewhere in your DNA. To write effectively and memorably in a language, you have to know (I mean know in the very primal sense of the word) that language jinle jinle. You have to know it in its depth. Poetry is the exploration and the exploitation of language beyond itself.
The standard of education in Nigeria has collapsed. I’m not being an alarmist here. I have been saying this for many years now. I know it. I’m a teacher. This is all I’ve devoted my whole life to; I’m a writer and public intellectual. Nigerian youths can no longer communicate. It is as simple as that. You are a journalist, invite holders of Master’s degrees who are job applicants. Tell them to go to Oshodi for one day and come back to your newsroom and write an essay about what they experienced. You would be surprised.

Many Ph.D. holders in English cannot write two paragraphs of errorless English. It is not that their brains are smaller than those of their predecessors. It is simply that today, even teachers know less. And you can’t give what you don’t have. It is the ones we are teaching now that will become teachers tomorrow.

Ask any of our students graduating in English questions about Shakespeare, they don’t know. Ask them about the important literary periods in literary history, they do not know, because they have not been taught. Today, the gap between teaching and cheating is narrower than Professor PAI Obanya divined about two decades ago. Compare what we call teaching here and the way it is done in saner parts of the world, and you’d be in for a big surprise. In the US, you just cannot think about coming late to class, even by one minute. And you cannot afford to miss a single class. Your students could take you to court for not fulfilling your own part of the teaching/professional contract. They’ve paid their money, they’ve paid their time. They want the best. At the end of the class you will be evaluated. If your evaluation is poor, you get sacked. There is accountability. There is equity. There is no accountability in the Nigerian system. Take UI, our ‘First and Best’. This is not the UI I used to know. This is why I am so angry that things have changed so terribly. The students we are producing now are half-baked not because they lack potential, but because those potentials are never actualized. It’s high time we began to examine those that are teaching in our university system. Mediocre teachers will always produce mediocre students. It is a logical process. Unless those students are lucky or they are extraordinary and so decide to learn beyond their teachers. Effective, conscientious teaching is vanishing from our universities.

This is a country where the Ministry of Education will supervise the excision of History from the school curriculum. What else is there to say? You need History, whether you are a scientist or whatever. You need to know what happened in the past. So, our new generation of students has been short-changed. I’m not demonizing them, not at all. My heart aches for their welfare. I’m not scaring them. I’m only telling them the truth. They will have to go beyond what they are being taught in the school for them to be able to measure up outside this country. There is no university in Nigeria that is standard, including my darling UI. I know it; forget all the glossy things you see around. It’s not glossy paint and tar that make a university. It is not things you can see from an ostentatious distance. We’re talking about the state of the laboratories; we’re talking about the state of the libraries. We’re talking about the state of the university bookstores. Before I left in August I went to the PR and PL shelves of the UI library where I used to sleep, literally, as a student. Many of the fundamental books are gone. Some of them that are still there have been cannibalized – with some chapters ripped off. Many of the Encyclopaedias have fallen apart. Why you don’t rebind, I asked. Put these vital books together again. Make them whole. Make knowledge whole. Make the human mind whole.

http://www.saharareporters.com/interview/%E2%80%98no-university-nigeria-standard%E2%80%99-prof-niyi-osundare

^^
What's 'errorless'? From Niyi Osundare of all people?
Nigerian education has truly collapsed.

Bros, "errorless" dey dico na?

Sagamite:

Bros, "errorless" dey dico na?

So I find. Must be American or something. What we're used to is error-free, a compound word. But then, I am no English professor. My apologies, especially to Prof Osundare.

Ah, I first thought if you were right then I don dey tabon tay-tay until I checked dico.

You scare-red me and my perceptioned of my grammars.