MATTERS ARISING : KALU DEGREE'S SAGA

The ignominious withdrawal last week of the bachelor’s degree certificate once gloriously conferred on former Governor Orji Kalu by the Abia State University is a development that touches the heart of the nation’s education system as well as the general nature of life which can be summarized in just one word: Corruption.

We have been so sucked up by communal delusion of grandeur with members pretending to be what they are not. Nigeria, an undeveloped country with her loads of material and ideological poverty, institutional shortcomings and governing inadequacies shamelessly passes herself off as a super-power; ignorant and uncouth individuals “package” themselves as scholars and analysts while fraudsters and 419 practitioners are presented as models of excellence equipped with the “Midas touch.”

It was immoral and conceptually incongruous for a serving governor who, under the system of public university administration, also occupies the august office of “Visitor,” to have been admitted into the same institution as “student.” It is okay that the Senate of the Abia State belatedly redeemed itself but it must still be said that the former governor, in all probability, would have been saved the embarrassment that the certificate withdrawal amounts to if he had had the opportunity of courageous counsel by those who were in charge of the administration of that campus when he approached them or he was actually approached for admission and the subsequent award of undeserved degree with all the fanfare of a Nobel Laureate.

The position of Visitor, derivable from the ancient practice of Domus in which someone of the highest integrity is appointed to supervise the implementation of the domestic statutes of closed institutions that are chartered to enact and implement their own laws. The Visitor is expected to periodically examine and resolve disputes arising between the institution and its members, namely, students and professors. But like most other ideas that we have imported into our system, the office, being the preserve for the Head of State or state governors in a similar position like that of the British Crown, the visitation process in Nigeria has become, in some cases, tools for inflicting raw injustice as well as the subversion of hitherto revered academic freedom and core values.

So concerned I was about this unhealthy development that I did a major research work on the subject in 1990, the outcome which was published in the International Comparative Law Quarterly of the British Institute of Comparative Law under the reference of Ikhariale, M. A. (1991) ‘The institution of the Visitor in English and overseas universities: problems of its use in Nigeria’, starting from page 699.

Unfortunately, it was ignored by those concerned. Orji Kalu as the Visitor to Abia State University was disqualified from obtaining a degree from the same institution. It would just be a case in which someone awards to himself a title that he was appointed to award to others with due diligence and procedure. The whole development was nothing but a huge sham that should have been resisted by the Senate of that university, ab initio.

The Kalu case is just a tip of the iceberg. There are tons of degrees, honorary or otherwise that have been awarded in this country over the years that are ludicrous and laughable in all respects. A university degree of any classification ought to be awarded only on the strength of the character and learning of the recipients. On the contrary, certified crooks, convicts and people of very low character and honour have been the majority of awardees these days.

According to the statement issued by the university, Kalu transferred his admission from the University of Maiduguri without complying with the academic regulations on admission-by-transfer which rendered the offer irregular, ab initio and, worse still, spent only two semesters before he was hurriedly graduated instead of the mandatory six semesters for such category of students. Ordinarily, abuses like these are what the office of Visitor was meant to check but it turned out, in the spirit of communal impunity, it was the Visitor who broke the rules himself!

From a practical point of view, as the executive governor of Abia State during the period, what time has he to meet and fulfil the rigorous academic requirements for graduation even if the admission processes were proper and procedurally in order? What manner of multi-tasking that would enable a state official as engaged as a governor to be attending classes, seminars and tutorials full-time in order to educate himself enough as to earn a university degree of any classification?

We have seen “students” who hold full-time jobs undergoing full-time academic programmes and many of them coming out with “first class degrees” while those who study full-time are barely passed. So many people today are full-time “graduates” of Nigerian universities while there is no evidence that they ever left their official employment for one day. Such developments certainly devalue the learning process and expose the universities to ridicule. This is only possible in Nigeria. Elsewhere, working people who desire degrees go through part-time studies and, lately, online programmes.

Several factors contributed to make the Kalu and all the associated cases possible. First, the ascendancy of impunity and anarchy over law and order in Nigeria. Two, the misguided belief that by simply describing someone as a “graduate,” such a person is necessarily educated forgetting that the hood does not make the monk. That explains the horrible spectacle these days of people in possession of dubious PhDs making the most elementary of intellectual mistakes that cannot even be associated with genuine school certificate holders.

My take is that the greater blame goes to officials of universities that have turned them into tools for dispensing undeserved favours. After all, we are all witnesses to the fact that the University of London, once voted to deny Margaret Thatcher, then a serving Prime Minster, and indeed an alumnus of the same campus, an honorary degree because her government policies were adjudged to be at variance with what the school expects and heavens did not fall.

The truth is whether or not a man has a degree does not say much about his ability. It is the Nigerian factors of falsehood and make-beliefs that have made it very attractive for everyone, educated or not, to acquire paper certificates fairly or unfairly. It is the vogue but shameful.---PUNCH