GRACE EDEMA writes that while students in other countries learn in conducive environments, public university lecturers and students in Nigeria are bogged down by dilapidated structures and obsolete equipment
Recently, 300-level students of the Department of Physics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, could not perform oscilloscope experiments because the Physics laboratory does not have the apparatuses required.
A peep through the window of the Physics laboratory revealed a dusty, old-looking laboratory adorned with archaic apparatuses.
The floor also has potholes due to aging.
One of the students, Peter Oye, told our correspondent that the class resorted to improvising whenever they were in the lab due to malfunctioning or outdated equipment.
For instance, they make use of their phones as a stopwatch and manage other old apparatuses, which usually do not give them accurate measurements.
More shocking, the Chairman of the University of Lagos Faculty of Engineering Alumni Association, Mr Dideolu Falobi, who graduated in 1987, told The PUNCH, “The classrooms in the Faculty of Engineering in UNILAG are still the same they were when I left there in 1987 and that is like 36 years ago, and there has not been any addition.”
UNILAG is not the only tertiary institution grappling with a dearth of equipment and outdated structures.
It is the same tale at the University of Ibadan, where, according to a 300-Level student of Zoology, Bolu Aderin, there is a gross shortage of laboratory equipment.
Aderin said, “Due to the high number of students in my class, who need to use the laboratory at the same time, we were divided into different groups, each group uses the laboratory once a week. The implication of this is that we only have the opportunity to do practicals once a month whereas, it is supposed to be every week.”
Outdated libraries
Most libraries in government-owned universities are adorned with old books, which no longer have relevance to current realities. Information in textbooks written 40 years ago or more will have been overtaken by modern discoveries.
Oye complained that the Physics textbooks in the school’s library were too old for modern realities.
He said, “On the floor of a section of the library in the OAU is a fallen ladder, which has been left there for days. Displayed books are also very old and sometimes do not have an account of the modern realities of what we need or are being taught in class. At the end of the day, you keep searching elsewhere for relevant books.”
Lecture rooms and hostels
Congested lecture rooms and hostels are other critical issues that make learning unconducive in Nigerian universities. Most of these hostels in public universities are like shanties of a sort.
The University of Nigeria, Nsukka Campus, Enugu State, has its array of dilapidated and abandoned projects all littered around the campus.
Also, a 70-student capacity lecture room in the Mass Communication Department is being managed by over 200 students who struggle every lecture day to follow what the lecturer is teaching.
Some students would stand by the window, doorway, looking exhausted waiting for the lecturer to end the lecture so they could collect notes from those who heard the lecturer.
A dejected 200-Level student of Mass Communication, who does not want his name in print, said, “We have whiteboards in our lecture rooms, but lecturers now use markers on them due to lack of electricity to power them.”
A move around the male and female residential halls of students at the University of Lagos also revealed dilapidated old structures.
The Moremi Hall, which is the biggest on the campus, has too many female students sharing limited spaces.
Clothes, kitchen utensils, and books were all littered around the rooms. More disgusting is the toilet facilities, which Chinoso complained bitterly about saying, “There is a huge infrastructural deficit in our hostels.
“There are some blocks without kitchens, so students have to cook in their rooms.
“Damaged and rusted water pipes are common, such that the water coming out from such pipes is contaminated. Blocked or leaking water closet systems abound such that faeces it’ll pour on the floor as you’re flushing.
“Old electrical connections…there are times that we have to contribute among ourselves to pay the electrician to help us fix certain things.
“The last time we contributed, we paid N500 each in the room. We needed to buy new sockets so we could use them to cook and charge our devices.”
Lecturers buy generators
Noise pollution and fumes from small generators also called ‘I better pass my neighbour,’ were seen vibrating aggressively at some departments at the University of Ibadan.
Similarly, at Olabisi Onabanjo University, students complained that there was hardly electricity on campus and access to the Internet on the campus was usually difficult.
In an interview with our correspondent, a professor of Linguistics at the University of Ibadan, Francis Egbokhare, complained about the use of generators at different corners of the campus due to a lack of electricity.
“You need to mention that lecturers now invest heavily in the small generator popularly called ‘I better pass my neighbour.’ It is that terrible. We earn little, buy a generator, and fuel it to teach students because the environment is not conducive to work.”
A former Head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department, at Obafemi Awolowo University, Prof Rotimi Adagunodo, lamented the increasing resort to improvisation, where needed equipment and educational materials are not available.
Adagunodo said, “The way technology is moving, improvisation cannot take us far; that is the reason our students and lecturers are always sweating; they put in the extra effort. The effort it takes to pass through school in Nigeria will almost be twice or thrice the effort it takes in other climes.
“In more organised climes, when you get into any library, you will immediately get the materials you need and what you cannot get immediately when they hear that they don’t have it, they are not happy, and the first thing the next morning, you get a call or a note in your mailbox that it is now available for you to use.”
Adagunodo maintained that in other climes, there was little room for improvisation. However, in Nigeria, the dependence on improvisation was alarming as nothing seemed to be functioning and available.
He said, “In the Western world, there is very little room for improvisation unlike here. Improvisation should be an exception, not the rule. Though improvisation is good because it brings out creativity, it is not something we should take as absolute. Whenever a lecturer or student says something is not working, then we say improvise. When will anything work in this country? If we continue like this, we can’t turn out world-class graduates.”
ASUU’s perennial battle
The Academic Staff Union of Universities has been in a long battle with the Federal Government and one of the major demands of the union is the infrastructure upgrade of the universities.
ASUU, which has resorted to prolonged strikes on countless occasions, wants the government to address the problems of poor funding, unequipped laboratories, congested classrooms, and general dilapidation of infrastructure.
The National President of ASUU, Prof Emmanuel Osodeke, explained, “In a typical science-based course, you are to have a one-hour lecture and a two-hour laboratory practical, but we have a situation where there are no laboratories where you can do the practicals. So, lecturers are forced to teach three-hour theories, trying to simulate what a practice should be, which is not supposed to be.”
Osodeke stressed that the available infrastructure is overstretched.
“A lecturer is in a hall that ordinarily should take a hundred or 200 students, but during a lecture, you have 500 to 1,000 students. One has to do with students having no seats to sit down. Some are hanging on windows. Some are sharing seats, and most importantly, there are no teaching aids or audio so that those students would hear what you are saying. So, you are forced to raise your voice to teach 2,000 students. And that’s particularly stressful for the lecturers.”
Osodeke pointed out that the government’s inability to recruit more lecturers led to the congested classrooms seen in most universities in the country.
“We have less than 60,000 lecturers,” he said.
Falobi emphasised that “Our federal universities and state universities, in particular, are underfunded and when there’s underfunding, recurrent expenditures take priority because if you don’t pay the lecturers, they will not deliver the most basic function of teaching. So, the focus should be to pay them. What is suffering are the tools and infrastructure.”
The incessant strikes by ASUU to pressure the government for better funding of public universities have often resulted in a situation where the universities are shut down for months.
Only last year, ASUU went on strike for eight months at a stretch, a situation that makes students spend extra years in school.
The incessant ASUU strikes have now, in turn, begun to make Nigerian youths consider going abroad to pursue an education, a trend that is commonly called ‘Japa’ (flee).
What it’s like on the other side
A Nigerian, Bolaji Aluko, who travelled to the United Kingdom for studies, said it was one of the best decisions she would take.
Aluko, who had her first degree at Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State, and currently studying at Teesside University, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom, described the UK school as more organised.
“Where I had my first degree in Nigeria, the land mass was wide and you need to take a shuttle within the campus or trek long distances. But here, they don’t have a large land mass, but the little they have, they can utilise it very well.
“I have friends that stay in the hostel, they have not for once complained to me they lack any amenity in their hostels.
“In terms of the learning environment, the classrooms here are not overcrowded. Each student has access to a laptop or desktop system and there is free Wi-Fi once you are on campus.
“The library is also well equipped, all the materials you need can easily be found in the library.
“Here, as a student, our lecturers give us opportunities to meet them one-on-one if we don’t understand what we were taught in class. The emphasis here is not to just pass, but to understand what we are being taught.
“Here, lecturers don’t come to class and start conducting impromptu tests, our assignments are part of our assessment and we have enough time to submit them.”
Another Nigerian student at Bournemouth University, UK, Femi Babatunde, said the UK university environment was modelled and built in such a way that one is excited to be a student.
“Ranging from the highly serene atmosphere, comfortable seats and desks, access to 24-hour Internet services, uninterrupted power supply, well-ventilated lecture rooms, good public address systems (not the old-fashioned megaphones that some of our Nigerian universities make use of) large screens, fixed and working projectors in every lecture hall. Well-equipped libraries with accessible computers for students. You have access to several books; as many as you are willing to read.
“The number of toilets in my university, I cannot even count. These toilets are well maintained as their maintenance is a source of livelihood for some people. It is in the UK that I saw that shifts are taken to ensure that toilets are kept clean as no one has ever stepped in there.”
Poor infrastructure affects learning
A former Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, during the inauguration and handover of some rehabilitated roads in Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ebonyi state, said, “The quality of education will be impacted by the quality of infrastructure and the learning environment.”
Storyboardthat.com says an unsuitable learning environment leads to stress and distraction for students.
Moreover, theschoolinrosevalley.org, added, “Research has shown that an engaged and conducive learning environment increases students’ attention and focus, promotes meaningful learning experiences, encourages higher levels of student performance, and motivates students to practice higher-level critical thinking skills.”
Way forward
Adagunodo called on the government to restructure the educational system in Nigeria and also stabilise it.
“We need a stable structure for our educational system, and it will take the government to give us that stability. The entrepreneurship aspect of the policy is not vigorously pursued; suddenly, when an administration changes, they will change the policy again,” he explained.
“Learning cannot take place without a conducive environment promoted by those who provide municipal services such as security, health, electricity, and water, amongst other needs that make a university whole.”
Likewise, the Vice President of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, Mr Abdussobor Salaam, reiterated that the issue of an unsuitable environment was not restricted to learning alone but the entire gamut of the university system.
He explained that all these facilities were almost non-existent due to lack of funding, saying the universities were short-staffed in personnel to provide medical services, the hostel amenities are poor, leading to sanitation challenges, classrooms are overpopulated and libraries were suffering a dearth of materials.
“The major solutions are increased funding and allocation to the university system, allowing Universities to creatively innovate more sources of internally-generated revenue, creating a stronger nexus between the University and external bodies, especially the industry to support the university, amongst others.”
He, however, warned that “On the flip side, there are also problems of accountability, transparency, and challenges of corruption, which demand that beyond throwing money at the system, effort must be made to ensure these monies are well accounted for.”
Coordinator of the National Association of Nigerian Students Zone D South-West, Emmanuel Olatunji, also insisted that the government should fund the education sector.
“There is a setup standard of funding of education by UNESCO, government should keep up to it and fund the educational sector properly.”
He suggested that the government should invest in the education sector by extending the funding infrastructures and other things done for the general public to schools as well.
“For instance, road networks, and road constructions should be done as well, social amenities like electricity should be available in schools and student residential areas, because most of our work in school requires electricity. Buildings like hostels, classrooms, theatre halls, libraries should be built in our schools across the federation.
“We have competent lecturers in Nigeria, the government should encourage them by making all these amenities and infrastructures in place as well as proper funding.”
Falobi advised that “It is all fund driven, it’s either the government does it for itself or we allow students to pay for what they use, there’s no other way. Now, old students’ alumni associations are being encouraged to help out, it’s a gradual process but we’re getting there. The other challenge we have is that, by the time we push all the funds to pay for loans, subsidies, and petrol, there’s no more money to put into health and education so we just have to move those funds and migrate them to what will protect our future.”
“The first step to get out of this is to take a second look at our university system. My position is that universities should be autonomous, and free of charge, so the government should make sure that no student that is qualified to attend a university is denied because of funds. This would be a scheme to ensure that when such students come out, they can pay back. Those structures that will support these should be put in place.”
