The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has decried recruitment system in the universities, regretting that many people not qualified to teach had found their way into the system.
It also blamed the lacklustre attention students get from lecturers to the poor learning environment across universities.
Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, National President of the association, who made the disclosure when he featured on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum in Abuja, yesterday, said learning environment in the 1980s and 1990s was different from what was currently obtained, stressing that the environment in most universities was no longer conducive for effective learning.
“Some lecturers have no business in the classrooms, but they found their way in due to political interference.
“You find that some lecturers probably have no business being in the universities but you know politics has done so much damage to us that sometimes merit is sacrificed on the altar of mediocrity and political connections.
“We hope that we shall restore the credibility of the system as we have been trying to argue over the years. A key step to achieving that is for government to create the enabling environment for us to go back to the renegotiation table.
“We need to talk more so that we can come up with a new agreement package that will help us in addressing our universities shortcomings in no time,’’ he said.
On the poor learning environment, he said: “Lecturers are supposed to do three things – teach, conduct research and carry out community services.
“I have visited a lot of campuses; the environment is not conducive. In our days in the university, we had what we called clinic hours. I started that way in 1988.
“Clinic hours are when students could come freely into my office and we will discuss their problems, academic and otherwise. It was possible because where I was working, we had stable power supply.
“Now, you will see that in some campuses, they will give you light during the office hours, and that is the end, and this clinic hours is best outside office hours.
“Lecturers are not routine workers; lecturers too are under pressure in their offices. They do not have the comfort, they do not have the wherewithal to do their work and students’ populations is more than four times over.’’
Ogunyemi said relating, communicating and getting to know the students had become difficult as a result of the large population.
Students, he said, oftentimes hide under the situation and may not even come to class which makes it difficult for lecturers to track them.
On the rising cases of intimidation of students by lecturers in tertiary schools, he assured that adequate mechanism has been in place to tackle cases of intimidation and harassment of students in tertiary institutions.
Last week, the University of Abuja sacked four senior lecturers over similar misdeeds, while some lecturers in other universities have even been prosecuted and jailed.
Ogunyemi, who described the trend as “sad” said ASUU had set up an Ethics Committee in every university to ensure its members did not go out of their bounds.
“ASUU has always been concerned with the conduct of our members and we have put in place mechanisms to ensure that our members don’t go out of their bounds.
“If you check our constitution, we have attached to it what we call `code of practice’. Our code of practice places a lot of emphasis on ethical issues.
“Some of these cases you have mentioned are part of the issues that we are trying to engage and interrogate.
“Contrary to what people say, we do our own internal cleansing, but we don’t see that as the primary issue for our existence. They are issues that just come along the line.
“What we do basically is, where we have such cases, we do our own investigation, once we can establish a prima facie case, we hand them over to the universities.
“Some of the cases that you later hear about could have even been initiated by the union.’’
Ogunyemi added that the university system had its processes and once cases of intimidation and harassment occurred, they were referred to the university disciplinary process who handle such cases.