Ending ‘Missing Scripts, Sorting’ Nightmare

The spates of missing scripts, sorting, inputting of wrong results and obnoxious practices in some public universities, leave much to be desired.
One cannot imagine how a student will be compelled to suffer consequences of the flagrant negligence of a Head of Department, a Lecturer, Department staff or an ICT staff.
Many academic and non- academic staff in several public universities seem to be performing far below standard, thus disproportionately unproductive to the university system. The unacceptable cases of sorting, missing Scripts, missing results, inputting of wrong grades to students, should not be mentioned in a university. This is because people who are employed to work in various positions should have cognate experience and undoubted competence. They should not be seen as certificate wielding illiterates but people who have been proven to be worthy in learning and character, diligent and competent to carry out assigned responsibilities with minimal or no supervision.
The university, as a citadel of learning should boast of men of integrity, people who are repositories of applied knowledge and competence to drive the much desired holistic development in a nation that functions on quality teaching and learning.
A situation where a student, having gone through the crucibles of learning and written a prescribed semester examination or class-based evaluation test, only to be told that his or her script is missing or that he or she did not participate in that academic exercise, or must sort to pass, is an unpardonable error. In fact some lecturers and staff of departments are using the seeming systemic lacuna (which is their architecture) as a smokescreen to extort from the affected students.
Sometimes it is discovered much to students chagrin that the supposed missing script was later discovered when a ransom was paid. Since a lecturer, or Head of Department has in their disposal both Yam and the knife and determines who takes what (if they wish to give without strings), students have no alternative but to submit to their importunate demands.
Such practices should be unheard of in an institution that should be a vanguard of moral and ethical values and conduct. What people learn in school constitute their behavioural patterns in the society. Where the school, as an agency of socialisation cannot drive positive change first in its immediate environment, then the objective of education as a bedrock for the development of society, is inevitably compromised and counter-productive.
The German Reformer, Dr. Martins Luther was quoted as saying, “I advise parents not to put their wards or children in any school where the Bible is not being used as a rule of life because such institutions will unnecessarily be corrupt”. Gleaning from Luther’s sentiment one can deduce that the lack of respect and regard for values as well as the absence of the fear of God is the greatest undoing of our citadels of learning.
Another major challenge is that lack of Information, Communication and Technology literacy or compliance on the part of some lecturers and heads of department, may have informed the decision to give students scripts to secretaries to compile and input students results thereby making the secretaries the de facto determinants of students’ fate. It is not saying a new thing that some of the secretaries in the process of compiling results have inputted wrong results, omitted names or degraded some students or giving unmerited grades to others.
Society today is ICT-driven and ICT-literacy enhances efficiency, speed and a reasonable degree of accuracy if the person behind the computer is level headed, articulate, competent, alive to responsibilities and is aware that negligence on his or her part is not only tantamount to a disservice to the university but to the students who may not graduate at record time because of his or her (computer operator’s) gross ineptitude or carelessness.
The ICT era makes the carrying of hard copy of results obsolete as lecturers through the Heads of Department can log on to the central server of the Exams and Records (if any) or ICT unit and input students’ results directly. By so doing the incessant cases where result on spread sheet is irreconcilably different from the one online, more often than not, caused by abject negligence will be avoided. The process will also end the intermediary services of some staff in the universities’ Information, Communication and Technology Department which has become a money spinner-a lucrative source of income to many of them. In fact some ICT staff reserved the power to award grades to students depending on students’ degree of compliance to terms and conditions. They can dubiously make or unmake a student.
The university community should be too lofty to have careless, negligent, immoral and academic or professionally deficient people as academic or non-academic staff.
The Vice Chancellors, Pro-Chancellors,Governing Councils and Senates of universities should be proactive in addressing the menace of missing script, inputting of wrong results and sorting.
This is necessary to end the slogan “Education is scam,” so the system can produce quality students who are truly found worthy in learning and in character by operators who exemplify diligence, moral and ethical values. The clamoured reform must begin with the agencies of socialisation, including the university communities.

Igbiki Benibo