Undertaking a PhD program of study at a Nigerian public university is like lining up to be hanged publicly without committing an offence. PhD candidates are shamed, humiliated, and subjected to human rights abuses. It is odd that universities that admit candidates into their higher degree programmes should be so ruthless and cold-hearted in the way they treat and relate with the students. In research higher degree programmes, there is little commitment on the part of supervisors and schools to provide PhD candidates with all the support they require to enable them to complete their studies on time. Students begin their programmes but have no idea when they would complete their studies.
In public universities, there is a culture of silence. Owing to the master-servant relationship, PhD candidates are not free to express themselves. The road to a successful completion of a doctoral degree programme is lined with thorns, intrigues, intimidation, harassment, and sometimes open threats. It is a tough terrain to navigate. Some supervisors have the bizarre understanding that their skills are measured by their capacity to fail students, including the ability to be callous, mean-spirited, and malicious. They believe their competence is defined by how much they frustrate their PhD candidates or how difficult and insurmountable they present the programme to their students.
The archetypal unsophisticated supervisor cuts the image of an arrogant, snobbish, dictatorial, and conceited academic staff who enjoys undeserved adoration and respect by students. But this misleading veneer of toughness operates only at the surface level. When you probe deeper, you will find that those character traits are used by the vacuous and old-fashioned supervisors to mask their academic and personal inadequacies.
To survive the uncertainties of a PhD calendar in a public university, the mood swings of the all-powerful supervisor, as well as the daily meal of obstructions and intimidation served by the supervisor, a smart PhD candidate must be resilient, tolerant, and steadfast. That student must be cool-headed. The student must be able to withstand all the challenges thrown on their path, including endless insults and deliberate acts of provocation by their supervisor. But, you know, some supervisors are so cantankerous that cool-headedness is no guarantee that the student would appease the supervisor.
Sadly, the PhD programmes of public universities are designed to take students to a head-splitting and exasperating point where they are compelled to withdraw. Many students are known to have started their degree programmes but were forced to quit midway. Do supervisors of PhD students derive pleasure from inflicting pain and shame on the students? Are supervisors so sadistic?
These are relevant questions because, in Western societies, a supervisor who maintains a track record of failing students or a record of supervising students who never complete their PhD programmes is clear evidence of lack of supervision skills, lack of knowledge of current issues in the field, and sheer lack of ability. In Western universities, failing students blots rather than enhances the reputation of a supervisor.
A good supervisor mentors their students and provides clear direction for them. The supervisor motivates their students and provides that invaluable advice that will carry the students seamlessly to the end of their programme.
Nigerian public universities and their cavalcade of frustrated lecturers must understand that it is not a crime for students to enrol into PhD programmes. Students do so because they aspire for higher knowledge. They aim to contribute to knowledge of their disciplines theoretically, practically, methodologically, and through policy recommendations. By undertaking research at PhD level, students seek to close existing gaps in their disciplines.
The unequal relationship that exists between supervisors of PhD theses and research higher degree students must end forthwith. PhD students must not be depicted as inferior while their supervisors carry themselves around superciliously as knowledge dispensers who are all-knowing. That conception of the profile of PhD supervisors is outdated and must be discarded. It is unhelpful.
Many PhD students opt to study in public universities not by choice but because of their financial circumstances. Given the free option, many students would prefer to enrol in commercially or profit-driven private universities where academic services are much better than what is offered in poorly financed public universities.
It is time the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the committee of vice-chancellors of public universities reviewed existing PhD programmes that have stalled the future ambitions of innocent students. It is unacceptable that university administrators should pretend they don’t know what is going on in their higher degree research programmes. For many years the relationship between PhD candidates and their supervisors has been abused. Students should not be admitted into PhD programmes and then prevented from completing their programmes. That practice is inhuman, retrogressive, insensitive, uncaring, and inconsiderate.
Every university must put in place regular and transparent review processes that would flag problems long before they occur. The universities must stipulate minimum and maximum periods within which students should undertake their studies. Students who fail to complete their programmes within the maximum period owing to their own fault should have their candidature discontinued.
The prevailing unlawful and unethical practices through which supervisors exploit and abuse students must be halted. Supervisors have obligations to their students and their universities.
Supervisors do not have and must not be deluded into believing that they have unquestioned, almost infinite authority to treat PhD students as they choose. PhD students should not be seen as prisoners of their supervisors. They must be given a voice. And universities must establish channels through which PhD students can report abuses committed by supervisors.
While public attention has focused so much on sexual harassment of female students by university teachers, little is known about the appalling treatment of PhD candidates by their supervisors. Former Federal Education Minister Professor Ruqayyatu Rufa’i warned vice-chancellors of Federal universities in 2012 that “The era of principal officers who constitute themselves into tin gods is over as the system has now been revitalised with stronger enabling laws to curtail the excesses of overbearing managers.” That caution should be extended to supervisors of research higher degree students in public universities.
Numerous abuses that go on in Nigerian public universities cannot be tolerated in overseas universities. They cannot be absent from lectures and expect to be paid at the end of the month. They cannot engage in substandard teaching practices and still be rewarded. They cannot avoid research activities and expect to be remunerated. They cannot shun publishing in reputable national and international peer-reviewed journals and expect to be paid. If they engage in pamphleteering and compel their students to buy those pamphlets, they will not be recognised and will not be promoted. Pamphleteering is not the same thing as publishing in reputable academic journals.
We can no longer overlook the excesses of public university teachers in Nigeria. They can no longer afford to subject students to physical and psychological abuse, including sexual harassment without being severely sanctioned by university administrators and punished severely by federal authorities and law enforcement agencies. Already, the public is disappointed with the declining quality of teaching and research in universities. Universities that operated for years as the quintessential faultfinder must now learn to spot and clear the huge log lodged in their own eyes.