The Nigerian University Student

Speaking from my own experience as a foundation student of one Nigerian institution of higher education, as a graduate of a second institution and as a lecturer in a third, and comparing these experiences and observations with those I had as a graduate student in two universities in England and one in North America, I would say that the average Nigerian student is pathetically ignorant of the nature and purpose of the university, ignorant of his own status and roles m the university community, confused and misguided as to his duties and obligations to society.

For this, we can blame the content and orientation of our educational system, we can blame the false values propagated by the erstwhile political leaders and we as university teachers and university administrators must partake of the general blame. We have all contributed to cultivate the myths that a knowledge and of hooks is superior to practical knowledge and sound commonsense, that the rest of the world owes the recipient of a university degree a living - the very best living at that, that the university don is a superior creation who need only make minimum contacts with the undergraduates at the safe distance between the rostrum and the lecture seats, and the myth generally, that hard work and commitment are for the birds when there are the easier alternatives of rigging, evasion and minimum involvements.

If our students leave the university after three or more years, and are ill-equipped to meet life's many challenges, we the teachers are partly to blame, but the students carry the major part of the blame. Before I leave the subject of students, I would like to spell out what equipment of mind and body, that students can expect to have acquired by the time they receive their parchment and hood.

1. The first, and in my mind the most important, is that they should have laid for themselves the foundation of an intelligent personal philosophy of life. They should have taken the several opportunities that must come to their way during the three or more years, to examine in relation to other persons and issues, their own views of the universe and the meaning of life. Each of them should have been exposed to the teachings and tenets of Islam and Christianity and of the indigenous religions. They should all have been in a position to make up their mind whether to include God in their philosophy or to leave Him out.

2. They should have acquired a certain degree of intellectual curiosity which will make them range farther than the confines of the prescribed texts and well-worn opinions.

3. Closely bound with intellectual curiosity, is the cultivation of critical judgement. The graduate should have learnt the difference between fact and opinion, have been alerted to recognise logical inconsistencies which are wrapped up in effusions of words, become wise to justifications which are dressed up in the garb of proofs and above all, have acquired the appreciation that new knowledge, new interpretation come only through questioning basic assumptions and that which is held to be axiomatic.

4. Intellectual curiosity and critical judgement are essential and probably adequate for the man with just above average promise and abilities. But for those who must reach for the stars and be leaders of thought and originators of ideas and move and revolutionise the world, a trained imagination is an absolute must. At club meetings, in coffee bars, in hostel corridors, within the book covers and in the daily encounters with lecturers and professors, the student should have learnt to sharpen his imagination in the face of problems and possibilities.

5. These; four qualities would have helped the student to acquire a fifth which is an understanding of fundamental principles pertaining to your chosen professions and a knowledge of working methods. His education should have been "characterised by both a depth of competence and a breath of perspective". He will be a well informed man but more than just being well informed. The philosopher Alfred Whitehead described "a merely well informed man (as) the most useless bore on God's earth. “Our university graduates will be men and women who not only know facts and how to do things but who also know the significance of what they know and do. It should neither be said that they are men and women who have gone through a programme in which they know "less and less about more and more until they know absolutely nothing but everything" nor be found guilty of the reverse sin of knowing more and more about less and less until they are ignorant of everything else.

They should all bear the badge of an educated man who, to quote Basil Fletcher, is "able to appreciate the achievements of the human race in literature, science, art, and social living. And secondly, he must be able to move with some facility in the realm of abstract ideas.

Finally, upon leaving the university, we can expect the student to have acquired social consciousness through being alive to human issues and problems which participation and study provide. Our universities would be failing if the offerings, opportunities and challenges they provide do not strike the chord of response and dedication to society's service. In present day Nigeria, a university and degree is the open sesame to a privileged group whose status symbols are a car, a fridge and subsidized housing. In order to make this achievement possible, the Nigerian tax payer has to subsidize each student to the tune of between N1,400 and N2,000 a year .In the richer countries, this is a considerable sum and in Nigeria where the per capita income is in fact as low as N40 per annum, it is a colossal investment. Thus, it will take an average Nigerian by today's reckoning, up to forty years to earn enough to educate a young man for one year at a university .It will require a life span of one-hundred-and-twenty-years if he sacrifices every penny he earns to enable the young man to earn his degree in three years! Would anyone be justified in accepting the benefit of this investment without a thought for the millions who have made it possible?