The academic decadence in Federal Institutions is holding us back

A loud wail pierced the air. Three young men rushed to grab the lady who was thrashing her hands wildly as she rolled herself from one point of the cemented ground to the other. Her legs moved with speed, kicking away at some parts of their bodies, her hands colliding with a few jaws and foreheads. It took the exertion of great strength from the young men to bring her to calm. Her chest was heaving up and down, only relaxing when she broke into intermittent sobs as the guys half-carried, half dragged her up the stairs, to the Head of department's office.

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Other members of the department who were not in class that very moment had formed clusters very close to the spot where she had once laid, hesitant to go any closer because rumor had picked immediately that she was likely possessed by an evil spirit.

After some minutes of clustering in fear-filled clumps, the braver students among us proceeded to the departmental notice board to resume or begin checking the result sheets which had been slammed to the board some minutes earlier. I advanced to the board as well when the Pickering had subsided, running my eyes over the course titles and levels to check for the dramatic lady's name to find out what had provoked such a reaction.

To the best of my knowledge, she was a final-year student who attended two of my classes because she had carried them over the previous year. When my eyes fell on the first course she had taken again, I saw a B. My eyes immediately began traveling through the board again, carefully stopping at every name beginning with 'Akpan', then I saw it. It was an F.

I shook my head in sympathy and was going to commence running my fingers lightly over the result sheets for my level, looking for my registration number to check my results as well when I overheard, though from whisperings almost drowned out by the noisy reactions of other students checking their results, that the lady who had begun the commotion failed a course she had been failing since her 1st year in the department.

It was like someone turned a light switch in my head on. The dots immediately began coming together. The lecturer who had made her fail since her 1st year was the same man who taught the course she just failed at my level too. Something was not adding up but I began to ruminate on the educational system in Nigeria, especially in the federal schools and an intensely sad feeling came over me. I stood at the board long enough to see I had passed all my courses then with a little relief, began walking slowly back to my classroom.

I remembered an incident that occurred when I was in my 2nd year, I had attended all the classes for a particular course, written the tests given, and written exams for the course but was still compelled by a lecturer to buy a text I was never going to use.

"If you do not get this book…" he said, hands lifted above his head so the students sitting behind could have a look at the book he was grabbing as his life depended on it. "...You will carry over this course." The last part drew disappointed sighs, mischievous chuckles, and from some bold students, vocal rejection.

Many people including myself did not take the instruction seriously because we were confident in the fact that we had done everything that was academically required to pass the course. When the result sheets were pasted, there were screams of disbelief echoing across the hall, 32 people had failed the course. Including some of the most intelligent members of the class.

I remember marching alongside a couple of my bold coursemates to challenge the lecturer, we were going to demand our examination scripts and if possible, defend the answers we gave to merit good scores but when we arrived at his office, he asked us to wait and listen to our names from a list he had pulled out from his drawer.

It appeared that this man had only given out marks to those who got the text as he had promised. He refused to let us see our scripts and insisted that he would only grant us scores that would prevent us from repeating the course if we got the text.

It dawned on me that these stressful, unfair circumstances are what have driven most of the youths into trying to gain illegal wealth because according to both their experiences and that of those around them, "School is a scam".

I inhaled deeply, releasing it slowly while moving my head from one side to the other in extreme sadness.

As I lowered myself into a seat in my classroom, I wondered if there was nothing that could be done to insist that lecturers awarded students the mark they deserved after going through the required academic processes instead of frustrating them due to greed and sentimental reasons.

It was not until my best friend, Treasure, tapped on my shoulder to inform me of the lecturer who had just walked in that I realized I had lost my mind to the academic decadence in federal institutions which had eventually become my food for thought for exactly 90 minutes.