Africa
Costly Insecurity In Nigerian Universities, by Ike Willie-Nwobu
A chilling report paints the horrific picture: two students robbed at raped at gunpoint at Tai Solarin University of Education(TASUED) in Ogun State on July 22, 2004. It was not the first time a night became a nightmare for female students of the institution.
In October 2023, four female students were robbed and raped by armed robbers in the same institution. After the first incident, the police promised to act, just as it has promised yet again. That there was a repeat means no strong action was taken. When will something be done? Is it until all female students in the institution are robbed and raped?
Education remains a massive risk in a country that continues to misplace its priorities. Arbitrary hikes in school fees have been known to cut short the dreams of many students. The whims of some lecturers also pose considerable threats to their students. Many of them have turned full-time extortionists eliciting monetary or sexual favours from impoverished and traumatized students. To flinch at their request is usually to fail their course.
If randy and rapacious lecturers pose a threat to the savings and skirts of students, strike actions are a higher degree of danger and destabilization. Every year the federal government retreats from its common ground with the Academic Staff Union of Universities and reenters the war zone. With battle line redrawn over remuneration and infrastructure in Nigerian universities, students are caught in the crossfire, sometimes stuck for months at home.
For decades, ASUU has pressed the government to improve infrastructure in universities. The inimical inadequacy of infrastructure in higher institutions in Nigeria is the greatest indictment of education’s underfunding. Students are often stuffed into classrooms and hostels where conditions are not ideal for learning and development.
In many higher institutions in Nigeria, where robbery and rape of students has is a recurring nightmare, school hostels are few and far between, forcing students to seek off-campus accommodation where their worst fears are typically realized at the hands of their hostile host communities.
This kind of security breach which traumatizes students to no end may have been reported again
And again in TASUED but students in many institutions of higher learning in Nigeria are similarly exposed and vulnerable to criminals. Absence or poor maintenance of school hostels frequently forces students to live outside the school at the mercy of hideous criminals.
Education, which is a public good elsewhere, appears to be a public burden in Nigeria, with the government often showing signs of distress in having to fund education. The burden has regularly fallen on the shoulders of students and their families, who are often crushed by it.
Upon admittance to an institution, the payment of school fees and other reasonable fees, the school is expected to provide a suitable environment for learning for every student. This includes comfortable living provisions, complete with clean water, light, security, and privacy.
When any school fails to provide these within the school premises and students are forced to live outside, it is still the responsibility of such a school to ensure the safety of its students wherever they are. This moot point seems lost on government and school authorities in Nigeria, with severe consequences for the welfare of students.
It is scandalous that in many tertiary institutions which sit at the pinnacle of the education pyramid in Nigeria, there is a paucity of classrooms and hostels for students. How much are students cramped into overcrowded classrooms expected to learn? What is the psychological state of students who can’t sleep at night because they are terrorized in poorly secured accommodations in schools.
No student should be raped by randy lecturers or rampaging armed robbers for seeking an education in Nigeria. The state of education in the country continues to fall, failing an entire generation for whom the light at the end of the tunnel has long been extinguished.
No fund which should go into building and equipping classrooms, libraries, hostels, relaxation spots and other buildings for students should be diverted by school authorities or the government. No contractor who fails to deliver on such projects should be left off the hook.
Education is an equalizer. Education offers hope by disabusing the mind of crippling disadvantage. More than anything, it is education that levels the playing ground for the competition in the high stakes game of life. Purveyors of Nigeria’s privilege, including corrupt government officials, know the power of education. It is why they send their wards to institutions around the world while others who stay back exude sweat, blood, and tears here to be educated only to elongate the queue of the educated unemployed.
If TASUED cannot build hostels for its students, then it should be shut down. Any higher institution with too few classrooms or hostels for students in Nigeria should be converted into a museum. There is no point exposing students to avoidable danger.
The authorities urgently have to look into this. For the National Universities Commission, oversight should not stop at the accreditation of courses. Priority must be given to the welfare and well-being of students.
University vice-chancellors many of whom are too busy enriching themselves to improve the welfare of students can certainly borrow a leaf from Professor Carol Arinze-,Umobi, the newly appointed Acting VC of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University who recently paid an unannounced visit to the hostels owned by the school to assess the living conditions of students.
Since universities in Nigeria often do not have adequate accommodation for their students within the school, the authorities should do more to engage the host communities, especially those who are hostile.
As for those university host communities whose unprovoked hostility to students bespeak entrenched wickedness, it is necessary to remember that a higher institution means education and education is light in the midst of so much darkness. To be hostile to light is to be obsessed with darkness.
Nigeria continues to fail an entire generation as its prodigious promise at independence fizzles out, leaving many of its citizens in a fix. It must either save its students from despair or prepare to save itself from demise.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
