From Bode Durojaiye, Oyo.
A don, Dr. Ayo Adeyanju, has said “in order to elevate the status of science, technical, medicine and engineering in our universities, no lecturer should be allowed to rise beyond the Senior Lecturer cadre unless he or she can lay claim to originality in specific inventions and discoveries”.
According to him, it is a drain on the economy to continue to pay fat salaries to academics who cannot match the creative genius of lower secondary students in Britain, Germany, United States, Japan and China.
Speaking with Freedom Online in Oyo town, he said: “Those
lecturers, who have scaled the hurdle and are now Senior Lecturers, Associate and full Professors may be given a probation period of three years to invent or discover something which has practical usefulness for solving societal problems. Failure to comply within the three-year probation should earn the egg-heads compulsory retirement”
Adeyanju, a retired and seasoned educational planning and management expert, also observed that in order to stem the rising tide of brain drain in the country, there is need for radical revitalisation of the non-oil sector, and re-evaluation of the national currency.
Said he: “If meritocracy will be allowed to prevail over mediocrity in students’ admission, it is high time the government stopped politically-inspired and pseudo-democratic slogans, such as quota system, catchments areas and geo-political origin.
“It is also high time we jettisoned such back door admission strategies like discretion lists of Vice-Chancellors, Rectors, Provosts, Deans and Heads of Academic and Service Departments. There are also other ridiculous lists from alumni, and not too well read philanthropists who occasionally repaint College buildings or donate transit buses for student use”.
Quota system, he noted and similar strategies, have been short-time palliatives that may eventually spell long-term disasters for the nation.
“In admission matters, other considerations should run a distant second to meritocracy. More Colleges, Polytechnics and Universities? Yes, but No to aspiring students who fail to make it to the merit table. Such could be re-energised and re-channelled into other productive sectors of the economy. The smaller the number of intakes with fertile and highly receptive brains, the better for this country”.
While calling on the National Universities Commission (N.U.C) to enforce a strict regulation on the award of honorary doctorate degrees to Nigerians and foreigners, Adeyanju said: “It is a pity that some get-rich-quick universities, in recent years, have polluted, diluted and
cheapened these academic culture by commercialising the award to every Tom, Dick and Harry”.
On the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Adeyanju said it should be more pragmatic and relevant to societal needs, adding that as such, the discharge certificate should be graded into Distinction, Upper Credit, Lower Credit and Ordinary Pass.
“Randomly selected but transparently honest assessors in the
school, office, company of factory where youth corpers served should assist in the grading before the certificate is issued. This grading format has a dual purpose, to keep the corpers on their toes during the service year, and to assist employers of labour to make the right choice among the ex-corper applicants”.
The don posited that a pragmatic re-packaging of the curricular in Colleges, Polytechnics and Universities could lead to the formation of well funded Think-Tank or Quick Intervention Force that would effectively combat, with of without foreign assistance, myriad of problems.
These problems, according to him, included urban decay and natural poverty; wind, sheet and gully erosion; desert encroachment; wave surge, coastal and marine erosion; damage to aquatic, marine and wild life; obsolete ideas and practices in agriculture, transportation, road and bridge constructions, health and nutrition, disease epidemics, electricity and water supply, as well as social maladies like cultism, exam malpractices and drug addiction.
