by By Dr. Paul Tawo Bukie
There is a common saying that “the law is made by the rich, advanced and connected people for the poor, ordinary and unconnected people”. This saying has been confirmed many times in Nigeria. Yesterday, it was confirmed again by a lot of Crossrivarians, who are learned and are expected to know the University laws because they have acquired University Education. They were joined by their unlearned brothers and sisters who had no opportunities of acquiring University education in confirming the saying.
Yesterday, cyberspace was saturated with pieces of badly scripted articles concerning the withdrawal of 638 students from University of Calabar over poor Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA). Among the students, one is rich, advanced and connected while the remaining 637 are poor, ordinary and not connected. From the articles I have read, almost everybody who is against the move by UNICAL is sympathising with the rich, advanced and connected student. No one is talking about the poor, ordinary and unconnected 637 students. Don’t they have brothers and sisters on Facebook? Are they not people’s children? This gain, has confirmed the saying “The law is made by the rich, advanced and connected people for the poor, ordinary and unconnected people”.
Prof Florence Banku Obi’s administration hit the ground running with some academic reforms. One of the reforms was to weed the University of students who are withdrawn from the University. The policy also aimed at enforcing those on “probation” to repeat one academic session and those on “change programme” to find other programmes within the University and follow appropriate procedures to change. The result brought about protests across the University where some departments were burnt down. With the intervention of “stakeholders” and also to help the students who were affected to remain in school and complete their programmes and graduate because they have paid fees, the University Senate took a bold step to address the issue by organizing two special examinations titled “mop-up” and “supplementary” examinations for different categories of students.
In the 2020/2021 academic session, the University organized two examinations. The first one was titled “Mopup Examination.” The mop-up examination was meant for students who were admitted during 2014/2015, 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 academic sessions who were either on “probation”, “change programme” or “withdraw”. The second examination was titled “supplementary examination”. This one was meant for all the students who missed exams because they were not able to pay school fees or they were not able to register for their courses online. The University granted some departments a “special amnesty examination” to enable their students to come back to school and complete their programmes.
After these examinations, the University made it clear that there will be no such examinations anymore and that at the end of every session, the names of those who are withdrawn from the University will be published to enable parents to know the status of their children. This decision was reached because during the protest the students claimed that “they did not know that they were either on probation/change programme or withdraw”. The University has remodelled the Examination portal to inform the students of their status each time they check their results. From 2020 till now, no student can claim that he/she is unaware of his/her result status.
Methinks this matter has been blown above its original proportion by some journalists and “citizen journalists” who have failed to investigate the matter before running to cyberspace. Their curiosity, impatience and inability to investigate matters that concern UNICAL has always caused them to blow such matters out of their original proportions. They politicise everything in the world, including their families. Where is the place of merit and integrity in our society?
The questions they should have asked before running to publish the news on Facebook are:
- Is the rich, advanced and connected student in UNICAL?
- Has he been attending lectures?
- Did he write the examinations?
- Is his CGPA in consonance with the extant University law?
- Is his total failed credit load in consonance with the extant University law?
Sadly, even very learned men and women of Cross River extraction have chosen to sacrifice Prof. Florence Banku Obi on the altar of a mundane political tussle. Because of their biased opinions on how they feel she should run the University, they don’t see anything wrong with the poor academic performance of the high and mighty because they have money.
The much I know about the University Examination portal is that every student who is duly registered on the portal owns a profile. The profile carries the student’s bio-data and academic records (results) from the year of admission to the year of graduation. If the rich, advanced and connected student knows that the University has treated him unjustly, he should present the original status of his result as it is on his profile and clear the matter.
Finally, we are all brothers and sisters. We live in one society. Our society must grow! It is our responsibility to make it grow and we cannot achieve that growth by being petty on very important issues. As a people, we owe ourselves a duty to put things straight, especially in academics.
This article is solely the opinion of the writer and has nothing to do with FAD FM or its staff.
