She also said that as a result, lecturers have been forced to start marking scripts of undergraduates and post graduate students with torchlights.
Responding to questions on the state of education in the country at the Fourth Convocation ceremony of Information Technology Business School, an information technology institution based in Lagos, Dr. Chiaha said that becoming educated in Nigeria was discouraging.
She said, “There are a lot of problems facing education these days. Go to some schools, apart from shortage of manpower, you would hardly see chairs.
“The teachers do not have where to sit, you are not even talking of teachers who have not been paid for about five months, and you would see children who have no books.”
Lamenting further, Dr. Chiaha said, “Most of us, lecturers, do read students’ PhD thesis with torchlights. You can’t believe it, but it is true.
“At school, you would prepare your lectures, go to classes to teach, conduct examinations, come back tired and at night there is no light and you have piles and piles of Masters and PhD thesis to read and you cannot wait for when there would be power supply, because the students would not graduate.
“So most lecturers end up buying torchlight to read the thesis at night.”
She also decried lack of government support for research works in the country, adding that lecturers solely sponsor researches carried out by them in Nigeria.
Explaining the reasons for the mass failure of students in most examinations like the one recently released by the National Examinations Council (NECO) in which only a few of the students had five credits including Mathematics and English Language, the university don said it was the result of lack of motivation.
According to her, most students now believe they do not have to read their books since they do not even know how to get jobs after graduation.
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