I Cheated To Pass WAEC, I Want To Withdraw – Student Writes Confession Letter To UNILORIN

Authorities of the University of Ilorin, Kwara State on Sunday said that they had accepted the voluntary withdrawal of a student, Jephtaph Abolarin, from the institution.



Abolarin, a 300-Level Sociology student, had written to the university confessing to cheating during his West African Senior School Certificate Examination.

Abolarin, who claimed he had become a ‘born again’ Christian, said continuing his university education, using an unmerited certificate was unjust and immoral.

He wrote the letter to the institution’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academics, Prof. Sidiqat Ijaiya, on August 5, 2016.

According to him, he wanted to withdraw from the school because he got his WASSCE through examination malpractice.

Reacting to the letter on Sunday, the university Deputy Director, Corporate Affairs, Mr. Kunle Akogun, confirmed the withdrawal of the student.

Akogun, who noted that the Senate of the university had accepted the withdrawal letter, added that the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Abdulganiyu Ambali, commended Abolarin for his repentance and sincerity.

The VC, Akogun added, wished Abolarin well in his future endeavour.

Part of Abolarin’s letter to the DVC read, “Just as a house that was built on a faulty foundation will surely collapse, it is also certain that a career that is built on a faulty foundation will definitely collapse. All through my secondary school days, I was just a church ‘goer’, without genuine salvation and the fear of God. As a result, I got my WASSCE result through examination malpractice.

“By the grace of God, now, I have encountered the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which called for repentance and restitution.

“Sir, with deep conviction, I have realised that there is no point building my academic career on a faulty foundation; since the WASSCE result I got through malpractice is the basis in which my admission into this university was anchored.

“Therefore, I have decided to withdraw from the university and start all over again.”

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150 illegal Courses in Varsities, Alarming!

 
The bastardization of tertiary education in the country plunged to new depths with the discovery that 37 universities were running 150 illegal or unaccredited courses. There has been a considerable din about the quality of degrees in Nigeria, both within and outside our shores.  This racketeering corrodes the value of such degrees. It is a strong reason why the masterminds should not go unpunished to forestall future abuse.

Ironically, federal and state-owned universities lead the pack; and this speaks volumes of the level of impunity on our campuses. The University of Abuja, whose medical programme was involved in a similar storm, tops the list with 15 disciplines. The 150 programmes span arts, science, education, law and engineering. One of the state-owned universities in the South-South ran five unaccredited engineering courses: civil, mechanical, petroleum, chemical, electrical and electronics. The details are in the National Universities Commission accreditation status of academic programmes in the nation’s 143 universities in 2016.

Evidently, the students have been scammed by these schools. Undoubtedly, it is a return of the outreach or off-campus programmes through the back door, which the NUC had banned a few years ago. Such flagrant disregard for the rules has ceded acreage for unlicensed universities to sprout. In August, last year, the NUC closed down 57 of them after they had successfully swindled thousands of youths desperate for university education.
 Guided by the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards, the NUC is empowered by law to ensure quality control by approving every course in the universities. For any academic discipline to be accredited, a critical mass of lecturers must be available. Other criteria are objective of the programme, curriculum and physical facilities that comprise classroom, laboratories, studies, workshops, machines, student admission and graduation requirements, and standards of degree examination as stipulated by NUC guidelines.

This process ends either with full, interim or denial of accreditation of a course. Any discipline with interim status means that the university authorities must remedy the deficiencies that led to the denial of full accreditation or lose its legitimacy. This is a canon well known to every vice-chancellor, university senate and council, and even heads of academic departments.

These delinquent institutions might have succeeded in the past, and were therefore encouraged to continue. What is puzzling is how the students were enrolled. As admission to universities is done through the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, were the 150 courses published in the brochure of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, for every prospective undergraduate to be guided in his or her choice of the course of study? If so, where was the NUC then? If not, how were they admitted?

It is apparent that these universities exploited the weaknesses in the operations of our quality assurance agency. The President of the Nigerian Academy of Science, Oyewale Tomori, also a former vice-chancellor, had early this year, touched raw nerves of the NUC hierarchy when he questioned the integrity of its accreditation during his convocation lecture at the University of Abuja.

He asserted that the process was compromised with “brown envelopes” (bribes) given to the accreditation teams by universities. “When there are allegations that some of the people who conduct accreditation in the name of NUC receive brown envelopes, the NUC will ask: Are those who give or take the envelopes not your colleagues? But the NUC forgets one thing, that the accreditation bears ‘NUC’s accreditation’,” Tomori exclaimed.

The new NUC Executive Secretary, Abubakar Adamu, now has his work cut out. He has to strengthen the agency’s regulatory mechanisms so that no university exploits any latitude to cheat. When universities exceed their admission quotas, they abuse their carrying capacities, which ultimately erodes the quality of instruction and degrees they award. This is why many graduates today cannot defend the certificates they parade or are unemployable.

In the United Kingdom, the Accreditation of a Higher Education Programme involves course content, delivery, staffing, relevance, quality assurance, coherence, challenge, assessment and resources. The NUC can help desperate students by maintaining a “National Data Base of Accredited Qualifications (programmes),” as it is done in the UK, which prospective students can consult.  Academics alone should not oversee accreditation, going by the integrity questions the process has evoked here. For instance, specific professional engineering institutes do degree accreditation in the UK.

However, the degeneracy of the system is fuelled by the proliferation of universities: 40 of them owned by the Federal Government, 43 belonging to states and 60 privately-owned. Professors and PhD holders are not enough to go round. How Kano State University, set up in 2001, had just one professor and 25 PhDs, according to the 2012 Needs Assessment of Universities, puts the issue in bold relief.

To get the NUC approval, many universities engage in a sleight of hand by hiring senior academics and equipment from other universities, or hurriedly recruiting staff to cover up their deficiencies. Those rented return to their base soon after the accreditation and those dishonestly hired are fired. Enugu State University of Science and Technology was nabbed in this labyrinth early this year. 

Our political and university authorities should get the message right: a university is a global centre of excellence involved in knowledge production through teaching, learning and research. Being ranked among the top in Africa, let alone being world beaters, will continue to elude Nigerian universities if sticklers for academic excellence and university tradition are not in the saddle as vice-chancellors.  Indeed, we need to once again produce the Kenneth Dikes, Hezekiah Oluwasanmis, Ade Ajayis and Adamu Baikes, among others, as vice-chancellors if we are to restore sanity to the system.

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Fed Govt Banned PTAs From Collecting Levies in Unity Schools

The Federal Government of Nigeria has banned the collection of development levies by Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA) in the 104 Unity colleges.

The Federal Ministry of Education, in a statement, said the ban would take effect immediately.

The statement was signed by Bem Goong, deputy director of Press in the ministry.

“No PTA of any Unity college is allowed to initiate any development project in any of the Unity colleges without the express or written authorisation of the Federal Ministry of Education.

“The measures are aimed at arresting the trend where development levies imposed on parents by PTAs are becoming higher than the fees charged by government which established the schools,’’ the ministry said.

It added that the Minister, Malam Adamu Adamu, had noted excessive PTA levies in King’s College, Lagos, and Federal Science and Technical College, Yaba, Lagos.

The mnistry said in the two schools, fees charged for JSS1 in the first term was N69, 400, while the PTA collection was N70,000 at Kings and N74,000 at Yaba.

“This brings the total paid by parents in these two schools to N139,400 and N143, 400.

“With the reduction on development levies and ban on charges for new projects as well as pegging of the development levy to N5,000, parents of JSS1 in these two schools will pay N88, 000.

“I acknowledge the complementary roles of parents and the support by the PTA to the colleges but I will not allow the PTAs to constitute themselves into a government within a government at the level of Unity schools and at the expense of parents,’’ the ministry quoted Adamu as saying.

It said Adamu expressed concern that PTAs in Unity colleges had formed themselves into national associations and said running additional organisations, such as National Parent and TeachersAssociation of Federal Government Colleges (NAPTAFEGC), increased the burden on parents.

 NAPTAFEGC rejected an alleged 300 per cent increase in the fees of Unity schools.

Dr Gabriel Nnaji, national president of NAPTAFEGC, told reporters that the alleged increase from N20,000 to N75, 000, was unacceptable.

He said an average parent with more than a child in Unity schools could not afford the cost.

But Adamu, on Tuesday, denied knowledge of the increment in fees.

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MURDER OF OLU FALAE'S GUARD BY HERDSMEN: OPC Wants Buhari's Intervention

     You will recall that Chief Olu Falae was attacked and abducted by Fulani herdsmen some months ago. Following the attack and abduction of Chief Olu Falae, he employed the services of Oodua People Congress (OPC) to guard his farm.
      Unfortunately, the herdsmen came back to abduct and kill one of the OPC guarding the politician's farm. The act did not seat well with the members of the OPC leaders in Ondo state and has demanded President Buhari to intervene. The herdsmen have killed many people in different parts of the country, the act which the president has failed to condemn.
    The herdsmen always kill people who challenge them for destroying their farms. OPC regarded the act as unacceptable and insult on Yoruba race.
     The herdsmen kidnapped Ayodele, one of the guards at the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chief Olu Falae and his corpse was found in a pool far to the farm of the politician at Ilado, Akure, Ondo State after some days.
     The police are yet to say anything concerning the incident. The OPC called on security operatives to rise to security challenges in the state to curb such act of killing. This act of killing should be condemned by Federal Government and the Government needs to rise to save the citizens he's governing.

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