Dr. Ayobami Ojebode
In this interview with ARUKAINO UMUKORO,
Head, Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of
Ibadan, Dr. Ayobami Ojebode, dissects the country’s tertiary education
system and points the way forward
Do you think a reform that would
mandate government officials to also send their children to Nigerian
universities would help its development?
Yes, it would help. And, my knee-jerk
response would be to support such a recommendation. But on a second
thought, I would not. If we were a communist or a military state, I
would say yes, let’s have it. I do not think we can have a democracy,
which runs on the wheels of individual freedom, and mandate public
officials not to express their freedom to educate their kids the way
they want. Democracy, the way it is, offers a protection from all forms
of abuse and misconduct christened personal freedoms. Once we chose
democracy, we chose all the add-ons with it. The process of effecting
such a policy will entail constitutional tinkering – and you know what
that means in Nigeria.
What are some of the education reforms Nigeria needs now?
Nigerian educational system needs to
shift from mere certification to practical utilitarian approach to
education. There is too much emphasis on certification and near-total
neglect of performance. This is not peculiar to Nigeria, but Nigeria, at
this point in her development and history, must know that it has to
think and act differently. The idolatrous glorification of certificates
has taken a worse turn in recent times: if you bring a certificate from a
university in any foreign country – no matter how backward that
university is, you are rated as better than a Nigerian graduate in the
labour market. It has nothing to do with what you are capable of doing;
what matters to employers, especially in the private sector is that your
certificate bears the name of a foreign country.
Also, we cannot pretend to be blind to
the rapid growth of “cash-and-carry” degrees, diplomas and certificates
in the so-called “learning or lecture centres” of certain tertiary
institutions. Many universities, polytechnics and especially colleges of
education run these centres just to generate revenue for the schools
and fatten the instructors’ pockets. Everything is for sale. When I tell
people that in all my 17 years in the Department of Communication and
Language Arts as a graduate student and lecturer, no one ever sold or
bought handouts, they do not believe me. But that is the truth.
What’s your view about the
perceived segregation between university and polytechnic graduates?
Should there be any discrimination at all, especially in job placement?
For some kinds of job, there should be
no discrimination. For jobs that require theoretical grooming or
background, there, of course, should be discrimination. I do not
understand what they do in the civil service very much – beyond reading
newspapers and giggling over political snide and sleaze and petty
marketing of ear rings and other items of jewellery during office hours.
Oh, yes, typing and signing local government identification
certificates and such other trivialities. If that is all, you don’t need
a university degree to do that and a graduate that’s employed in the
civil service should be treated the same way a polytechnic graduate is
treated. This is my view. Extensive academic and proprietary research,
in-depth disquisitions about the ethics and politics of this and that
may be beyond the cranial competence of polytechnic graduates, except
they obtain additional post-qualification training.
As a lecturer, what are your major challenges with teaching Nigerian undergraduates?
My major challenge is that I encounter
daily students who wake up, spend their day and go to sleep thinking of
examinations and certification, and not about life-changing learning.
Changing this mode of thinking is a major challenge. Once you say, “Hey
folks, this won’t come out in the exam but you’ll need it out there when
you leave here,” you have lost the entire class. I also think there is
too much attention to frivolities among students these days. I remember
that as undergraduate students, we attended public lectures and symposia
just because the topics posed ideological and academic puzzles. Today,
if it is not a social party or an open crusade where miracles are
promised, you are unlikely to find students in any remarkable number.
There are challenges of infrastructure, learning materials, electricity
and so on. I have to pay heavily to use the Internet provided by
Internet service providers, not by the university. But these are
surmountable challenges, and at the University of Ibadan, we have had
administrations that have confronted these challenges headlong in the
last 10 years or more. That certainly hasn’t been the case in most other
universities.
What advice would you give
undergraduates in getting the best out of a frequently disrupted
education system in the country today?
I try to make my students memorise the
first stanza of Robert Herrick’s famous poem – “To the Virgins.” That
stanza goes thus: “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may; Old time is still
a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today; Tomorrow will be
dying.” So, I tell them, like the teacher in the famous film “Dead Poet
Society,” Carpe Diem! Seize the day! That’s the first thing to know and
do.
Secondly, I would say, think beyond
certification; think of competence and performance. A set of students
graduated from my department a few years ago. I found something close to
a pleasant epidemic among the students in that set: they had this
change-agent mentality that amazed me. Before graduation, some had even
registered their small businesses; some had signed up as trainees with
NGOs. That was the set of students that carried their communication
skills into the community. At some point, they raised funds to clothe
pupils in a government-forsaken primary school, and provided materials
for hygiene in some others schools. They were my ideal graduates, the
best I have seen so far.
Thirdly, I would say, master basic
communication skills. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you need
clear and persuasive communication skills – speaking, writing, and
listening, especially. You may know all the science, technology and
humanities, but if your first sentence at an interview is an odious
grammatical thrash or a phonetic mishap, you are done for – except, of
course, if those on the panel are blissfully unaware. Some highly-placed
person once called me up and said, “We just interviewed one of your
former students and the young man held us spellbound. That guy knows how
to market himself. What do you people teach them in that place?” I
threw in a joke: “African magic! Since he held you spellbound!” We had a
good laugh and I was very happy. Good communication skills are
indispensable in everything – even to find a wife or husband. What
really is in the world that isn’t communication? Whatever it will take –
a formal training in communication skills, self development, whatever, a
graduate must equip herself or himself with good communication skills.
Our higher institutions must also review their Use of English content
with a view to meeting this need. Imparting practical, clean,
communication ability should be the driving objective of Use of English
courses.
Can you compare and contrast the standard of education in public and private universities in Nigeria today?
It’s hard to answer this kind of
question and be perceived as unbiased. I must say, as a department that
runs unparalleled postgraduate programmes in Nigeria, we have had the
rare opportunity of interacting with graduates of private and public
universities. We have met all kinds of students from these two
backgrounds. We have met outstanding graduates from both kinds of
university; and we have met incredibly poor ones from both as well. It
is hard to judge now. Of course if speed of completion is the issue,
private universities are better, I mean, faster. If, however, standard
is the issue, then it is difficult to judge. I must say, however, that
in any part of the world that I know, it is hard to find a Department of
Economics graduating 31 first-class degree holders in one year, as it
happened in a famous private university in South-West Nigeria few years
back. I thought first-class meant “exceptional, alpha, primus inter
pares.” When everyone in a class is first among peers, you wonder who
the peers are! Put rather bluntly, there is this seeming desperation
among private universities to behave more as businesses than as
academia.
English Language seems to have
drowned the knowledge and teaching of Nigerian languages. Won’t this
pose a problem for our cultural identity in the future?
Unfortunately, this is so. And in the
foreseeable future, it will continue to be so. And I agree that it will
pose a problem to our cultural identity and collectivity. We have a
language education policy, a well-articulated policy aimed at
encouraging the use and preservation of Nigerian indigenous languages
but you know, even public schools aren’t following that policy. I was
hoping the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria would prescribe the
establishment of a university where the language of instruction would be
Yoruba only. As Dr. Tunde Adegbola has pointed out several times, no
nation has ever witnessed industrial breakthrough using a foreign
language – as we use, except probably Singapore.
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