Before We Move to the Next Level

29^th December, 2018

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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s frightening and devastating as the current security situation in Nigeria, particularly in the North is, it may concern many of us that what we don’t know may far be more than what we know regarding the current spate of violence, atrocities and senselessness bedevilling the land. For example, about forty kidnapping, robbery and related incidences were locally reported in communities within five local government areas of Katsina State in the space of one month, but virtually none managed to make a story in our major national dailies or broadcast media houses within the first five days of occurrence; more than two third of these incidences were never even mentioned out of the localities they occurred at all.

Months before this plethora of lawlessness, a single kidnapping incident in which 20 million Naira ransom was reportedly paid in one of the five local governments in question occurred, with only few people outside the state being aware. Let’s keep in mind, this is the Commander-in-Chief’s home state; let us not even mistake how daring and reckless criminals can be in other states. In this country, we now have territories literally ruled by criminals.

If we should restrict ourselves to what we already know across different states, we can see that we are in far more serious trouble than we are imagining. Add this to the fact that so many communities are suffering from different forms of insecurities which are either under-reported or completely unreported. Take a break to also consider the fact that aside physical insecurity, a typical average Nigerian is not completely free from one form of basic social or economic insecurity or the other.

From persistent terrorism to banditry, violence to senseless killings, conflicts to brutal jungle justices; the insecurity situation is a highlight to where Nigeria is heading to if something urgent and decisive is not done. It is no longer a question of putting in the best efforts; it is of compellingly doing what is required. The truth is, citizens now fear criminals far more than they fear authority and many will not hesitate to pledge their allegiance to rogues, if that is what will make them safe.

May be, we have been used to so much abnormalities for quite long, hence we take so many things for granted. Just think of any one country that will under any circumstance allow all its universities to be closed for over 50 days without any resumption date in sight. It doesn’t matter what the excuse is or who the blame goes to, but just consider the social, economic and political price the whole nation will have to pay. A recent report revealed that incessant strikes have kept Nigerian universities closed for a cumulative period of three good years over the last twenty. Three years is roughly enough to raise and graduate a complete generation of Nigerians. How many nations on earth, irrespective of their status will allow that under any guise?

Let’s forget about the elites and ruling class and ask ourselves as ordinary Nigerians, how much are we concerned by these developments for which we are the direct victims? While our emotions and lamentations always appear to be high whenever there is an incident, we don’t appear to be seriously concerned afterwards, at least serious enough to unite in forcing stakeholders to solve the problem. Before the elections, we were divided more on regional and ethno-religious grounds, now that the elections are close, we are more divided between ‘moving to the next level’ and ‘getting Nigeria working again’. As sad as it may seem, many only see these insecurity issues from the prism of the 2019 elections.

Only few have consistently and unshakably stood for justice and righteousness all along. The destructive threat of politics to our collective well-being cannot be underrated. Politics is a deadly negative weapon in this country. You can deploy it to scuttle almost anything. The most tactical way to kill the substance of any serious issue in this country is to politicize it.

Politics is being played as if every year is an election year. The talk of 2019 began right in 2015 and some have even started talking of 2023. This is so, even if we are yet to truly reform the political process to make it all-inclusive as against the exclusive right of the rich and privileged. The political players aren’t collectively concerned with our current journey to nowhere. The few of them who do are apparently because they’ve lost out in the current political game or trying to get relevance in the next.

Let us not be fooled by Nigeria seemingly functioning as a nation despite not being one. The only reason why it looks so by the way is because the elites basically function as a nation through the government, but not the citizens, which are most critical. To put this into perspective, think of some basic things a citizen require from his nation or state. A citizen wants to assuredly feel his life and properties as generally safe and secured by the state or at least to feel satisfied by its efforts in doing so. A citizen wants unrestricted access to basic justice when he is directly or indirectly wronged even by the state itself. A citizen wants hope of a better future by the state, which gives him reason to unite and work comfortably with his fellow countrymen irrespective of their social, economic and political differences. No visible foundation for the provision of any of these three in Nigeria presently.

Any politicking or agenda that is not set to fix this is bound to fail. It is most unfortunate that after decades of military rule, we didn’t really get the fresh start to nationhood that we deserved from 1999. Rather, we got plunged into one destructive crisis after another. The only probable reason why Nigeria is still standing and appears to be working is because the elites are united by selfish interest which is well served.

There is something fundamentally wrong with how problems are approached in Nigeria both individually and collectively. The sweep-it-under-the-carpet approach, just-condemn-and-appear-to-be-doing-something style, God-will-intervene rhetoric and the ‘we-are-doing-our-best syndrome’ are yet to decisively solve any problem so far. Unless issues are resolved amicably and immediately as they arise, they compile and make future issues inevitable and worse. Whether we accept it or not, any attempt at prosperity will woefully fail without fixing the fundamentals.

For example if bandits exists but do not attack for the next one year doesn’t mean the problem has been solved, for they can choose to attack any time. If bombs do not go off in motor parks for months, but we still have people who can and are willing to make and detonate bombs at any given opportunity, the problem is alive and potentially active. When people are very much conscious of the inability of our justice system to timely and adequately prosecute criminals, they will never be discouraged from crime. If thugs are aware that no matter how much they are fought and neglected by authority, they will still be employed during elections by the same people, violence will never be defeated. How many security personnel would be willing to die or get incapacitated for a country in which he is not even sure of a befitting burial, not to talk of his retirement benefits?

In situations like this, it’s difficult for superficial solutions to work. Only far reaching steps that will address the problems from the root will suffice. To do this, a society with justice, equity and equality before the law must be put in place. Government may be sincere and determined to use all within its immediate powers to tackle some issues, but unless the ruling class all directly or indirectly agree to keep politics aside and agree on fixing the fundamentals once and for all; real and permanent solutions would continue to elude us. The earlier this is done, the better for everyone and once we do this, we can keep moving to many more levels. Otherwise, we will be periodically changing leaders and governments only to discover that we are revolving around one place. Not only that, same problems will keep surfacing and resurfacing in different forms and times.

We began this year with insecurity and vulnerability of Nigerians to senseless killings as the major topic of discussion. Sadly, we are not only closing it with same, we are opening another year on the same note. 2018 is yet another year to forget.

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez

Minimum Wage and Matters Related

26^th September, 2018

By: Amir Abdulazeez

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ccording to media reports, over 300,000 people have applied for the about 4,000 Federal Road Safety Corp job vacancies which recruitment process is currently on-going. Statistically, every single vacancy is chased by at least 75 possibly qualified applicants or more. Some few years ago, it was reported that over 800,000 people applied for some few thousand INEC job vacancies. Reports available then, suggested that the figure was just conservative going by the fact that the deadline for closure of the applications was just mid-way.

When the Nigerian Police Force recruited 10,000 officers last year, the trend was similar; in fact over the last one and a half decade, any massive recruitment exercise has been greeted by this desperate rush. The circumstance in which some twenty one Nigerians lost their lives while many others sustained different degrees of injuries in search of jobs with the Nigerian Immigration Service in 2014 is still fresh in our minds. Apart from the dead, fainted, slumped and the injured, hundred others lost all or some of their heard-earned academic credentials in stampedes.

The irony of all these is that while majority of employed Nigerians at various levels are working under one of the least conducive atmospheres coupled with one of the most unrewarding remuneration packages, millions of other Nigerians are willing, struggling, fighting and even dying to become like them. When Nigeria reviewed its minimum wage to N18,000 almost a decade ago, Venezuela already had its at N80,000 while several other developing countries in and outside Africa paid between N25, 000 to N90, 000. Worse still, Unemployed Nigerians virtually have no power over their fate as the processes through which they can escape their predicaments are usually anything but transparent and credible. That’s not all; every year, the backlog of unemployed graduates keeps accumulating with the addition of fresh ones who are not only mostly unemployable, but who lack any initiative and guidance to see opportunities outside the prism of government jobs.

The Nigerian Labour Congress is preparing to go on strike over the Federal Government’s alleged foot dragging and lacklustre attitude towards finalizing talks that will pave way for a hypothetical new minimum wage which figure appears to be undecided. While it has been reported that NLC is demanding N56,000 or N65,000, the private sector proposing N47,000 and states  appear reluctant to name a figure. To be fair and honest, one cannot fault Nigerian workers if they ask for a pay rise considering the high level of inflation that have made the price of some goods and services to more than quadruple since the last time minimum wage was reviewed. The popular feeling among the labour circles is that every commodity in Nigeria adds value every now and then except workers’ wages. Since, they don’t have the power to control the cost of living; the only language they’ll understand is a pay rise.

Looking beyond the minimum wage however, there are so many directly and indirectly related questions and issues which we must be asking and raising aside the minimum wage itself. Is the new proposed minimum wage viable considering the economic situation of local, states and federal governments as well as the private sector? What do we do with rising unemployment crisis in the land? Is there a need for general labour reforms in the country? What are the other issues surrounding wages; wage structure, wage timing, wage equity, etc?  As the engine room of the Nigerian bureaucracy, what role is labour playing in the country’s development? What is the initiative or lack of it of the Nigerian labour towards moving the country forward?

More than 20 states in Nigeria have at various times between 2013 to 2018 been unable to pay workers’ salaries despite a series of Federal Government bail-out given to them through the Central Bank of Nigeria at various times. Before the bail-outs and Paris Club refunds, the states owed workers from between 2 to 12 months salaries. Several months later, many of these states still owe workers. It is still not very clear whether this problem still persists because some of the states allegedly misapplied or even diverted the bail-out funds or because the bail-out funds were not just enough to solve the problem. Whatever the case, one thing that is crystal clear is that majority of the states in Nigeria are not economically fit to exist as states not to talk of having the ability to pay a revised minimum wage and hence no short-term solution can change this. Of what general value will the minimum wage be when not all employers can pay it?

Our tragedy is not that we have carelessly allowed our governments to be the biggest employers and are battling to pay an existing minimum wage that is at par or below the world severe poverty line parameters; it is that a revised minimum wage can only last for a while even if implemented. It is painful to say this, but as long as our economy is unstable and vulnerable to inflation, we may need to review the minimum wage upward almost every year which is quite unrealistic. Only a stable and growing economy would allow citizens to make significant meaning out of their earnings. Another issue is that Nigerian workers depend almost entirely on their salaries for everything. Long term subsidized packages from government and private sectors that will allow them acquire basics like houses, cars and other properties are not popular in this part of the world.

The unemployment crisis we are being faced with will sooner or later consume this country if left unsolved. Seeking for a job in Nigeria is a job in itself. The sooner we treat it as a national emergency, the better. Government cannot provide employment for all, but it can seek partnership with labour to open up the private sector and expand its capacity as well as mentally prepare graduates to think outside being employees and become employers themselves. Government must also reform the recruitment process at all levels to accommodate transparency, credibility and meritocracy to have semblance of justice, fairness and inclusiveness. As long as employment continues to be a privilege of the connected few citizens, a violent revolution driven by frustration one day awaits.

We always blame the politicians for the corruption and backwardness of the country without looking at the roles of the civil and public servants in that regard. The question is whether Nigerian workers at all sectors are playing their part towards a better Nigeria. For example ASUU have been going on strike for years blaming the government for almost everything without looking inwards. The union has been seeking a rise in education quality from without more than it is seeking it from within. Isn’t the union aware of how internal recruitment of lecturers has now been dominated by nepotism and favouritism? While this has resulted to the system becoming replete with incompetent hands, how much has the union tried to stop university administrators from doing this? How is the union working towards mounting a mechanism that will expose the incompetent members among its ranks who are the main drivers of poor quality education in the country due to their poor teaching?

The need for general and far reaching labour reforms in the country is imminent. Consider the fact that in this country, two graduates of the same discipline and experience and roughly the same nature and amount of work employed in different sectors would be earning different wages that are miles apart. One may be earning between N40,000 to N60,000 because he works in a state or federal ministry office while the other may be earning between N250,000 to N500,000 because he is working in CBN, NNPC, NCC, DPR, NPA, NIMASA or FIRS. With this, how do you expect all workers to be fighting for the same cause? There is no labour law in Nigeria you will review and get any convincing justification for this inequity.

The argument usually advanced is that these are agencies where huge monies are generated or involved and hence the workers there must be paid well or else there’ll be corrupt. Isn’t this a clear admittance of the inability to discipline workers? Is this to say revenue generation is the most important national priority? Should others working in sensitive places like justice and environment be neglected since they don’t generate revenues? The bigger problem is that it is not anybody’s fault that he is not able to work for these agencies since their vacancies are only reserved for the privileged.

While government complains of shortage of funds, politicians who supposed to be public servants earn huge, mind-blowing and sensibility-insulting wages that are enough to cater for so many Nigerian workers and even employ numerous others.

                            

From the 1960s to date many developed and developing countries in Europe and around the world have enacted laws to guarantee wage equity so that differentials in wages would not be determined by gender, race, status or privilege, but rather, if necessary by qualification, experience, profession, amount and nature of work as well as risk involved. Here in Nigeria, the wage gap keeps expanding not only across tiers of government, but across sectors and agencies with little or no justifications.  There is need of wage harmony and regularization.

   

While the Nigerian Labour Congress is declaring a warning strike over the minimum wage, it will be better if it starts looking beyond it to attain substantial and sustainable gains in the Nigerian labour system along with global best standards. To achieve that, short term solutions like the minimum wage, though vital will not suffice. A larger stakeholder effort may have to be initiated to look into the problems holistically and come with bold action plans to solve the problems. 

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez

Mentorship as a Panacea to Academic Underperformance and Social Vices among Nigerian Students

15^th August, 2018

 BEING A PAPER PRESENTED ON THE OCCASION OF THE ‘KANO WEEK’ ORGANIZED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF KANO STATE STUDENTS (NAKSS), FEDERAL UNIVERSITY, DUTSIN-MA (FUDMA) CHAPTER.

By: Amir Abdulazeez

Protocols

Introduction

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or many years, universities and other tertiary educational institutions in and outside Nigeria have been a symbol of scholarship, excellence and integrity. People directly and indirectly associated with such institutions are seen as those who rank very high in the societal ladder of progress and sophistication. However, with the global population explosion and its inadequate management, particularly in the Third World which came with so many attendant issues like increase in crime and social vices, our tertiary institutions were not left out; universities are gradually turning out to be centres of immorality and indiscipline. 

Poor academic performance of students is believed by many to be among the reasons for the production of half-baked graduates. It cannot be categorically ascertained whether recorded failures reflects the true capacity of the students or it is the influence of other factors that makes the students to perform below their capacity. However, it is clear that young and inexperienced students would always need guidance and counselling at an early stage of their entries to stand a better chance of performing true to their capabilities and potentials. Students’ performance is very important because, it appears to be the major criterion by which the effectiveness and success of any educational institution could be judged (Sunday and Kola, 2014). Though many critical factors can be identified as responsible for improved students’ academic performance in the country, but the main thrust of this paper will focus only on the role of teachers’ mentorship in this regard.  

Social vices on university campuses range from petty crimes to very complex ones. Vices like exams malpractice, indecency, indiscipline, drug abuse, cultism, prostitution, homosexuality, rape, theft, burglary, fraud and some other unimaginable things are common among students. This is not to say that tertiary education institutions are the genesis of all these, but they provide an enabling and welcoming atmosphere for them to manifest and thrive. Many of these vices have unfortunately been regularized and normalized as part of tertiary education life and values. It is because of the rise of social vices in Nigerian universities that in July 2004 for example, the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on Drug Abuse and HIV/AIDS prevention in tertiary institutions. FUTA is the only university chosen in the South-western Nigeria for the project, which was expected to last twelve months in the first instance.

The need for solutions to all these cannot be over emphasized. While it should be noted that parents, teachers and school authorities are putting in decent efforts to curb these menace, different approaches need to be employed if any meaningful success is to be decisively recorded. While this paper will advance mentorship as a way forward, it is pertinent to state that all these problems cannot be solved entirely by it, but it can help prevent most and minimize many of them. This is because in the lives of students, there is always a vacuum left to be filled by whatever comes their way. If they are lucky to have that vacuum filled by quality mentorship, they become the best out of the rest.   

Students as Vulnerable Species

Tertiary institutions, particularly universities are very complex environments due to their flexibility, heterogeneity and cosmopolitan nature. The first hurdle a fresh inexperienced undergraduate student needs to cross is that of understanding the environment, its dynamic nature and devising adaptation strategies to survive and succeed. People who fail in doing this from the beginning find it quite difficult to recover for a significant part of their academic lives. The few of them who indeed recover do so when it may have been too late to adjust and make significant amends. For example, we have students who are ignorant or not too conversant with how the CGPA is computed and reflected for their first two years. Others subconsciously fall under bad influence of their first friends and associates, only to realize the damage after two or three years.

Most students enrol into tertiary institutions at around teenage age and with basically only O’ Level experience to tap into. Some who come in with some experience either as Direct Entry candidates or through any other experience are apart of still being young also find it somewhat difficult to cope with the entire dynamics, peculiarities and challenges of the environment.

The minimum age for entry into the university is sixteen. A lot of the young students lack neither the mental maturity to cope with the university complexity nor the moral stability to resist the temptations of indecency it has on offer. With lecturers, staff and almost everyone else being too busy to cope with the operations and demands of the system, young and inexperienced students are left to their fate and inclinations of their peer groups. This is where early mentorship needs to come in.

On paper, tertiary education institutions are tasked with training students in learning and character. However, the present obtainable reality of the educational system in Nigeria lays a great emphasis on developing learners’ cognitive abilities and ignores altogether character formation among them (National Teachers Institute, 2003).

Mentorship in Perspective

Because of the prevalence of mentoring in various settings, giving it a large scope without demarcated boundaries as well as the wide range of issues mentors address, scholars have struggled to develop a common definition of the term. Infact, there are over 50 different definitions of mentoring in the social science literature. Some describe mentoring as a concept or process, while others use the term to describe a specific set of activities (Pathway to College, 2011).

Some definitions of mentoring may include but are not limited to: a learning partnership between a more experienced and a less experienced individual; a process involving emotional (friendship, acceptance, support) and instrumental (information, coaching, advocacy, sponsorship) functions; and a relationship that becomes more impactful over time. Others discuss nurturing the mentee’s social and psychological development, serving as a role model, and providing support for goal setting and future planning. There are basically two types of mentorship; informal and formal mentoring.

Informal Mentoring: this form of mentoring, as the name implies is largely unofficial, flexible, natural and sometimes accidental. Informal mentoring many times begins or happens subconsciously, though it sometimes transforms into formal mentorship. It is used to describe supportive relationships students have with older and more experienced individuals such as parents, extended family members, neighbours, teachers, acquaintances, and others with whom students have regular contact.

Informal mentoring involves the provision of general guidance and support and, in some instances, helping a student learn something new. It also promotes students’ sense of well-being by challenging the negative opinions they may have of themselves and demonstrating that they can have positive relationships with adults (Rhodes, Grossman and Resch, 2000). The relationship may be short- or long-term, but in both instances mentoring has a lasting positive impact on the student. Informal mentoring relationships are far more common than formal ones. A survey of mentors found that 83% of those responding indicated their relationships with students were established informally, while only 17% worked through formal mentor programs (McLean, Colsanto and Schoen, 1998).

Formal Mentoring: This is official, established and often designed with a set of objectives and regimented tasks. It is executed base on the purpose for which it was set, with designed processes and measurable deliverables clearly stated. Formal mentoring involves a structured and intentional approach to offering students those experiences and benefits similar to the ones provided by informal mentors. Such initiatives are often facilitated by an agency or program dedicated to this purpose. It encompasses both one-on-one relationships between an adult and the student, or an older more experienced peer and a younger peer, as well as small groups of students working with an adult or older peer on a particular goal. In all instances, mentoring activities take place at regularly scheduled times over an extended period, and are most often only one component of a comprehensive program (Sipe and Roder, 1999).

Formal mentoring programs place a strong emphasis on academic performance, character sophistication, positive youth development, reducing the likelihood that students will engage in risky behaviours such as poor school attendance or drug use, and community concerns such as civic engagement and college and career exploration. They can be school-based, community-based, and occasionally workplace-based. The sponsoring entity recruits and trains the mentors, matches them with their mentees, and provides support over the duration of the relationship (Allen and Eby, 2007).

Who is a Mentor?

A mentor can literally be anyone who has a superior experience, maturity and knowledge than the mentee as well as the willingness and skills to serve as a model or someone who is more than an adviser. Academically, he should also be someone who understands the workings of the academic environment in addition to having the ability the make students to get the best out of themselves as well as to avoid harmful distractions which the environment presents.

According to the Council of Undergraduate Research, University of Central Florida, an ideal mentor is a person who provides you with wisdom, technical knowledge, assistance, support, empathy and respect throughout, and often beyond, your graduate career. Mentoring helps students understand how their ambitions fit into graduate education, department life and career choices. It is not easy to find a mentor who apart from possessing the aforementioned qualities has the time, character, patience, passion and style to effectively mentor students. Since most students lacks the experience and courage to choose mentors for themselves and many teachers may not see close mentorship as part of their job description, it is good that schools’ management embark on deliberate exercises to assign the right mentors to students.

Many times, it is the mentorship process that makes a mentor to discover himself as such, hence, an effective mentoring relationship develops over time. The student benefits from the mentor’s support, skills, wisdom and coaching. Later, both people deepen their working relationship, perhaps collaborating on projects in which the student develops into a junior colleague.

To be mentor is neither easy nor a one day job. However, for a start, he is basically expected to cultivate certain attributes like being attentive, candid, helpful, supportive, emphatic, informative, inspirational, open-minded, respectful, proactive, rigorous and sincere. Some of these are elaborated below;

A Mentor should be Available: Certainly one of the most valuable commodities a mentor can offer is his or her time. Quality time with a mentor is paramount for student success, but how can this process be optimized to ensure that the time students and their mentors spend together is wholly productive? There must be mutual trust and respect, openness and companionship. With this in mind, a mentor should not discount the value of taking time to eat lunch, go for sports and recreation or engage on a walkout with the mentee. This will enable the former to master the psyche and conquer the attention of the latter.

He should be Attentive and Exhaustive: A mentor should be attentive to the student being mentored. Maintaining continuous communication with a mentee can be an effective way of curbing the occasional unreliability found among undergraduates because it allows for immediate accountability. While it may be somewhat time consuming, such attentiveness is especially worthwhile for the younger undergraduates. To remain attentive, a mentor can employ multiple modes of communication, including email, phone calls, and even social media. Contacting students to inquire about their projects through such modes of communication can be useful if the mentor cannot do so in person due to other commitments.

Accommodating and Understanding: Undergraduates are under tremendous stress at times for a number of reasons. They may be offering so many courses, aside practicals, fieldwork, extra-curricular activities, etc. With all of this in mind, it is important for the mentor to maintain empathy for students, and to be understanding and accommodating of the student context. To understand this near perfectly, the mentor may sometimes need to reflect on his days as a student. He must be careful not to allow the mentee notice any sign of burdensomeness in him.

Who wants to be mentored?

Sometimes, it is more challenging finding the ideal mentee than the willing mentor in a Nigerian university system. The fact that tertiary intuitions are multi-gendered, multi-ethnic and multi-religious means there are always compatibility issues to be considered. However, the most important is for the potential mentee to minimally distinguish himself as one who is keen to be mentored and developed. No matter how the mentor tries with all his skills, limited success can be achieved unless the mentee is available, willing, assimilating, responsive, responsible, respectful and progressive. Though, it is in many cases essentially the duty of the mentor to instil many of these attributes in the mentee, there must be some basic foundation on which he begins building them. This is where the role of parents comes in.

In the Nigerian academic set-up, mentees may be difficult to establish, organize and control because of the large population size of the students, poor to zero home training to build on, unconducive environments, overwhelming influence of peer groups, some potential mentors being culprits of social vices themselves, etc. 

It is important at this juncture to differentiate between a protégé and a mentee. The term protégé has a clear history in mentoring research and primarily applies to individuals engaged in senior–mentor and junior–protégé relationships within an organization where protégés are clearly identified as “under the wing” of a mentor—protected and nurtured over time. The term mentee is used here to refer to the broad range of individuals who may be in the role of “learner” in mentoring relationships, regardless of the age or position of the mentor and mentee.

How Students should be stage-mentored

Teachers should have confidence in their ability to shape the thinking, behaviour and aspiration of students both academically and socially and should not see any student as unmentorable no matter the circumstance of that student. Good mentoring in all its forms involves treating students respectfully and fairly, providing reliable guidance, and serving as a role model for upholding the highest ethical standards. The best way to foster good mentorship practices is by promoting an institutional culture that values the role of mentorship in graduate education and this can be done in stages.

In the foundational or initiation stage, a teacher and student enter into a formal or informal mentoring relationship. For informal mentoring, the pairing process occurs through professional or socio-academic interactions between potential mentors and mentees. Mentees search for experienced, successful people whom they admire and perceive as good role models. Mentors search for talented people who they think they can work with. If an institution has formal mentoring programs, the pairing process is deliberate instead of leaving the relationships to emerge on their own. Good matching programs are sensitive to demographic variables as well as common professional interests. The assignment of a mentee to a mentor varies greatly across formal mentoring programs. Regardless of the method, a good formal mentoring program would require both parties to explore the relationship and evaluate the appropriateness of the mentor–mentee match.

The execution or cultivation stage is the basic stage of learning and development. After a successful foundational stage, the mentee learns from the mentor in the cultivation stage. Two broad mentoring functions are at their peak during this stage. The career-related function often emerges first when the mentor coaches the mentee on how to work effectively and efficiently.

The psychosocial function emerges after the mentor and mentee have established an interpersonal bond. Within this function, the mentor accepts and confirms the mentee’s professional identity and the relationship matures into a strong friendship. The cultivation stage is generally a positive one for both mentor and mentee. The mentor teaches the mentee valuable contemporary lessons gained from the mentor’s experience and expertise. The mentee may also teach the mentor valuable lessons related to new technologies, new methodologies, and emerging issues in the field.

The exit or separation stage generally describes the last part of a mentoring relationship which may end for due to various reasons. There may be nothing left to learn, the mentee may want to establish an independent identity, or the mentor may send the mentee off on his or her own the way a parent sends off an adult child. This stage sometimes comes with attendant problems if not handled with care. Misunderstandings between the mentor and mentee arise when only one party wants to terminate the mentoring relationship. Mentees may feel abandoned, betrayed, or unprepared if they perceive the separation to be premature. Mentors may feel betrayed or used if the mentee no longer seeks their counsel or support.

Another level is the rediscovery or redefinition stage, where both mentor and mentee see the good or need in extending their relationship beyond mentoring. If both parties successfully negotiate through the separation stage without problems, the relationship can evolve into a mutually beneficial relationship or socio-professional friendship. Unlike the cultivation stage, the focus of the relationship is no longer centred on the mentee’s career development. The former mentor may establish mentoring relationships with new mentees. Likewise, the former mentee may serve as a mentor to others.

A Glimpse of Mentorship in Nigerian Academic Institutions

It would be wrong to assume that mentorship is non-existent in the Nigerian tertiary academic institutions; however, the form in which it exists doesn’t appear to have any definite context, scope, significance and impact. Though this paper wasn’t able to lay its hands on any tangible data that will help assess the status of mentorship in Nigerian universities, but it is safe to declare that our academic institutions are dotted with individual stories of mentorship successes, just like it is with tragedies emanating from lack or misuse of it.

The stories of so many professors and successful professionals have been told on how mentorship was a building block to attaining career heights and character excellence. There is hardly one single professor in Nigeria who wasn’t directly or indirectly mentored as a student by his teacher(s) or as a junior colleague by his senior(s). In fact, some of the exceptional students you see on Nigerian campuses are those who have been receiving one form of direct and indirect mentorship or the other.

On the other hand, there are stories of how lecturers under the guise of mentorship turn students into servants, errand boys, scouts, informants, conspirators, sex slaves and even exploitation objects for money. It is sad to note that many of the social vices we complain of in campus are being co-perpetrated and benefitted by some of the same people who ought to be contributing towards curbing them.

Teacher-student relationship in Nigerian education institutions has generally not been excellent, often been frosty, unfriendly and discouraging. In the few instances where the opposite is the case, there are tendencies of suspicion and ulterior motives. While students, (many of whom are averagely opportunistic) exploit their closeness to lecturers for unethical favours like earning undeserved grades rather than being mentored, teachers (many of whom are averagely high-handed) do so for selfish self-gain as against mentoring them.   

In a nutshell, mentorship impact or lack of it in Nigerian tertiary institutions is not something that can be categorically measured. Though these institutions mandates includes building character and discipline alongside education, it is yet to be seen how deliberate and decisive measures are being taken to not only ensure that but to prevent and tackle the menace of social vices that threatening to consume them altogether.

Mentorship and Academic Performance

A study was conducted in 2014 in University of Vienna Austria with 323 students (290 mentees, 33 non-mentees as a control group) of different nationalities. Comparing mentees and non-mentees, there were statistically significant differences within all indicators of academic performance between the two groups. After 1 year of study, mentees had better average grades and passed more courses than non-mentees. After 2 years of study, mentees still had better average grades and passed more courses than non-mentees.

There have been occasional attempts to estimate the performance of Nigerian universities, though student-teacher relationship has been partly considered, but mentorship has not been categorically taken into account. The study carried out by the National Universities Commission (2002) and coordinated by the University System Annual Review Meeting (USARM) assessed the performance of federal universities with special reference to teaching, research and service to the community. Ten universities were selected for the study, and the performance assessment was based on the stability of academic calendar, quality of teaching, research, funding, physical development, quality assurances, internal efficiency, staff and student union activities and elimination of vices. However, one major shortcoming with this was that each Vice-Chancellor was allowed to rate his/her university.

As a result of this, this paper cannot state in exact quantitative and qualitative terms how mentorship or lack of it has been affecting Nigerian education; it can only highlight its potentials relying on few experiences and deductions. What we generally know is that mentorship promotes collective excellence, the creation of new knowledge and consolidating existing one and exploration of wider horizons and perspectives beyond ones scope and capabilities. It also fosters team-based scholarships that engage students in the adventure of discovery.

As an undergraduate, your objective is to obtain knowledge; in graduate school your objective is to contribute knowledge to a field of study and begin to function as a member of a profession. Even though you may be passionate about a particular subject, your ultimate goal for pursuing an advanced degree may still be evolving. This is an opportunity for your mentors to assist you with that evolution.

Studies indicate that graduate students who receive effective mentoring demonstrate greater efforts to;

ü  Find ways to boost understanding the content and applications of knowledge from courses taught as well as how to correlate such with the real world. Earning better and constantly improving grades, achieving shorter time to graduation and performing better in academic coursework.

ü  Productivity in research activity, tutorial presentations, students’ competitions and grant writing. Professional success with greater chances of securing a tenure-track position if seeking employment in academics, or greater career advancement potential if seeking leadership positions in administration or sectors outside the university.

ü  Mentoring enables graduate students to acquire a body of knowledge and skills; learn techniques for collaborating and networking; gain perspective on how a discipline operates academically, socially, and politically; develop a sense of scholarly citizenship by grasping their role in a larger educational enterprise; deal more confidently with the challenges of intellectual work.

Mentorship and Social Vices

Once students leave the vicinity within which their parents are, they seem to have a new sense of freedom and soon a vacuum is created in their lives and except someone else quickly fills that vacuum, they can easily go astray leading to so many social vices. While studying the effect of social vices on the academic achievement of students from ten colleges of education in the South-South region of Nigeria, Nsor et. al (2016) concluded that 2,458 or 81.5% of the students interviewed admitted  that those engaged in social vices never do well academically and most of them end up unsuccessful with academic certificates.

Dropout rates in our tertiary institutions appear to be very high. Although institutional statistics are notoriously unreliable and many universities do not monitor their dropout rates, the NUC attempted in 2002 to calculate dropout rates within the federal university system with some success. Its preliminary findings suggested that dropout rates may be as high as 50% at six universities. Dropout rates of 10% or less were attributed only to the three federal universities at Kano, Maiduguri and Owerri (NUC 2002b). Poor academic and social vices are some of the key reasons for such dropouts.

Over the past two decades, various attempts have been made to deal with the problem of cultism. The various measures taken include the enactment of decree 47 of 1989 that pronounced a number of jail term for any cultist found guilty. Also the Federal Republic of Nigeria under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in 2000 issued a three- month ultimatum to all Vice-Chancellors to eradicate cultism from the campuses. Some higher institutions also set up anti-cult groups consisting of the student body itself and some security agents to monitor and check the activities of cultists on campus. Despite the various measures, it appears the proliferation of cult groups and their dastard acts continue unabated.

Once social vices strongly manifests, there are difficult to eradicate without repercussions. One of the key to addressing this issue is prevention which mentorship can help provide. For instance, it may be quite impossible to discourage a student whom examinations malpractice had helped survive in the system up to two or three years, but it is easy to have prevented him from indulging in it in the first place.

Proposing a Model for FUDMA and NAKSS

Research has consistently found mentored individuals to be more satisfied and committed to their professions than non-mentored individuals (Wanberg, Welsh, & Hezlett, 2003). Furthermore, mentored individuals often earn higher performance evaluations, higher salaries, and faster career progress than non-mentored individuals. Mentors can also benefit from a successful mentoring relationship by deriving satisfaction from helping to develop the next generation of leaders, feeling rejuvenated in their own career development, learning how to use new technologies, or becoming aware of issues, methods, or perspectives that are important to their field.

The Federal University Dutsin-Ma already has a policy of assigning staff advisers from various departments to each student who are expected to guide and counsel him on academic and non-academic matters. The students’ guidance and counselling units and the division of students’ affairs are also in existence. However, results show that there is obvious lack of impact of these policies on the problems on ground. This means that the university needs to rebrand, rejuvenate, strengthen and reemphasize this staff adviser policy as well as devising an evaluation mechanism to assess it. The university should find a way of not celebrating only students with first class, but also those with sound characters. Awards like ‘mentors of the year’, ‘role model of the year’, ‘most decent student of the year’, etc. can be initiated to motivate people towards goodness.

The university can create an online database of mentors with their profiles, make it available and accessible to students as well as encourage or even compel them to reach out to like minds among them. The management should also strengthen the strict enforcement of laws against the obvious social vices that are threatening it and should not hesitate to kick out bad elements that are damaging its reputation.

Students’ unions like the National Association of Kano State Students (NAKSS) can make significant impact towards promoting mentorship as a way out of this current mess. They can create a mentoring hub were high ranking students in 400 and 500 level can pre-mentor fresh students or link them with lecturers who are willing to mentor them. Students union’s on campus can organize team mentorship sessions in groups where students will gather and learn from each other’s’ experience. In these sessions, emphasis can be laid on helping students improve themselves academically and refine themselves socially.

Some Misconceptions and Challenges about Mentorship

One major challenge about mentorship is the misconception about it. Many believe a mentor to be an absolute problem solver, a financial sponsor or as someone who bears the burden of a mentee’s personal responsibilities. Because of this, sometimes the mentor is overburdened beyond his duties and capacities. Students also misconceive their lecturers serving as mentors as people who will help them with free marks or ask his colleagues to do such or someone who will make life unduly easy for them on campus.

We have bad teachers disguising as mentors in a bid to achieve ulterior motives towards the students. This is believed by many to be one the biggest factors that is making eradication of social vices on campus more complicated. We also have unethical mentoring where the mentor goes ahead to carry out functions for the student which he ought to carry out himself as against guiding him. This may include but not limited to doing assignments for him, etc.

Lack of adequate man power is also a hindrance towards mentorship in Nigerian universities. The average ratio of students to lecturers is roughly more than 1:50 or often more and the implication of this is that one lecturer is expected to mentor not less than 50 students at any given time which is quite impossible. Social factors like demographic differences may constitute a problem for mentoring. For example a male lecturer closely mentoring a female student may be easily misconstrued or misrepresented and this may lead to some people avoiding such scenarios to protect their reputation.

In some instances, mentors in the long-run feel threatened and become envious of their mentee’s achievements forgetting that mentorship is not to train people to remain under you, but to be like or even better than you. One other thing is that mentorship is neither authoritative nor exhaustive; just like a mentor can’t force his decisions on his mentee; he can also not guarantee that his efforts would be the ultimate solution.

Conclusion

From a global perspective, economic and social developments are increasingly driven by the advancement and application of knowledge. Education in general and higher education in particular, are fundamental to the construction of a knowledge economy and society in all nations (World Bank, 1999). Tertiary educational institutions are the factories that process and produce our skilled human resources which we employ to run vital sectors of our nation. If we allow these factories to turn into breeding grounds of criminals and half-baked graduates, we are automatically destroying our country.  

All what this presentation has been trying to do is not to present mentorship as an ultimate or stand-alone solution to academic underperformance and social vices among Nigerian advanced level students, but rather as a complementary effort which can do more preventive than corrective impacts. However, if the raised problems are to be adequately addressed, there will be need for far much wider systematic efforts whose elaboration will lead to another presentation entirely.

The students’ affair divisions of academic tertiary academic institutions have been putting up appreciable efforts to see that our universities are places of good conduct, but their efforts need to be taken to another level. To do so, we don’t necessarily need to task government with rectifying these issues as we that are part and beneficiaries of the system can solve this in house.

E-mail: abdulazeezamir@hotmail.com

Twitter: @AmirAbdulazeez

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