Folks: Anyone with more than just a casual acquaintance with the situation in the Nigerian academia would agree that Nigerian professors are neither overpaid nor underpaid; if anything, they are just grossly under-served! I have a problem whenever I see people, especially in universities in the U.S., talk down at the academics in Nigeria. I consider it unfair and unconscionable.
I am surrounded by many friends and family members who are current and past professors in Nigeria and I have visited a good number of the current ones in their offices in the last few years, especially in 2011 and 2012. If all they are paid is <$5000.00, which I doubt very much, anyway, my question would be, "why not?" An Assistant Professor makes more than that on the average in the United States. Unlike their counterparts in the West, these people derive little or no benefits from their universities or governments; their classrooms are jam-packed with students - hundreds in number - with no graduate assistants! (Imagine if this were to be the case in the United States - I once taught a foundation class of 213 students and had 8 or 9 graduate assistants, because for every 25 students you were entitled to one graduate assistant); little or no standard healthcare plans; no safety on campus, quite unlike those of us in America who could decide to work in the office 24/7 if we choose to, once it's getting dark, you rush back home in Nigeria for fear of armed robbers on campus or cult groups shooting at you or stabbing you; little or no life insurance benefits - imagine the number of Nigerian professors dropping dead and becoming problems to their families; no Individualized Retirement Accounts (IRA), no "401 (K) retirement accounts; little or no endowments to their chairs; few, if any, locally sponsored grant writing opportunities; no tuition waivers or reductions to tuition of their children or spouses attending the same universities where they are working; limited to no decent, well-equipped offices (except offices of the VCs, which are disproportionately larger than the average president/chancellor's offices in the United States); little or no professional development opportunities, limited to no libraries for research; no consistent power to at least run air-conditioning under the blazing heat of Nigeria; few or no modern computers (desktop or laptop) provided at least every three to five years (it's no exaggeration, but I saw with my own eyes professors who were still using monochrome computers in 2012 or some still writing articles and memos longhand!); and above all, little or no government, university, or private organization's incentives for research! Even if they are paid three or four times what they currently earn, how far can that go in a proverbial pocket perforated with life's essential needs!
Here is where my heart bleeds for an average Nigerian professor: They continue to be productive; many are prolific writers, publishing papers and writing books, even if locally produced, under these excruciatingly painful working conditions! Many of them spend their own money to attend conferences in as far away as the United States, Canada, Australia, etc. I hosted many in the early to mid-90s, and recall when Professor Falola used to give those who came from Africa money to help defray their expenses for attending some of his conferences. If those of us in the academia in the West (certainly in North America) are subjected to half the stress and unsavory conditions as those in Nigerian universities, we would jelly-fish ourselves into the bottom of the productive deep.
From: Abayomi Akinyeye <yakinyeye@yahoo.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 2:49 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigerian professors among best paid in the world
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I am surrounded by many friends and family members who are current and past professors in Nigeria and I have visited a good number of the current ones in their offices in the last few years, especially in 2011 and 2012. If all they are paid is <$5000.00, which I doubt very much, anyway, my question would be, "why not?" An Assistant Professor makes more than that on the average in the United States. Unlike their counterparts in the West, these people derive little or no benefits from their universities or governments; their classrooms are jam-packed with students - hundreds in number - with no graduate assistants! (Imagine if this were to be the case in the United States - I once taught a foundation class of 213 students and had 8 or 9 graduate assistants, because for every 25 students you were entitled to one graduate assistant); little or no standard healthcare plans; no safety on campus, quite unlike those of us in America who could decide to work in the office 24/7 if we choose to, once it's getting dark, you rush back home in Nigeria for fear of armed robbers on campus or cult groups shooting at you or stabbing you; little or no life insurance benefits - imagine the number of Nigerian professors dropping dead and becoming problems to their families; no Individualized Retirement Accounts (IRA), no "401 (K) retirement accounts; little or no endowments to their chairs; few, if any, locally sponsored grant writing opportunities; no tuition waivers or reductions to tuition of their children or spouses attending the same universities where they are working; limited to no decent, well-equipped offices (except offices of the VCs, which are disproportionately larger than the average president/chancellor's offices in the United States); little or no professional development opportunities, limited to no libraries for research; no consistent power to at least run air-conditioning under the blazing heat of Nigeria; few or no modern computers (desktop or laptop) provided at least every three to five years (it's no exaggeration, but I saw with my own eyes professors who were still using monochrome computers in 2012 or some still writing articles and memos longhand!); and above all, little or no government, university, or private organization's incentives for research! Even if they are paid three or four times what they currently earn, how far can that go in a proverbial pocket perforated with life's essential needs!
Here is where my heart bleeds for an average Nigerian professor: They continue to be productive; many are prolific writers, publishing papers and writing books, even if locally produced, under these excruciatingly painful working conditions! Many of them spend their own money to attend conferences in as far away as the United States, Canada, Australia, etc. I hosted many in the early to mid-90s, and recall when Professor Falola used to give those who came from Africa money to help defray their expenses for attending some of his conferences. If those of us in the academia in the West (certainly in North America) are subjected to half the stress and unsavory conditions as those in Nigerian universities, we would jelly-fish ourselves into the bottom of the productive deep.
In my humble opinion, the Sahara Reporter's report is a shallow view of a deeper problem. It's fixated with the "crooked load on the head of the man with crooked legs" and could not even notice where it all started from. It fails to look at what actually matters - the source of knowledge production in Black Race's most concentrated centers of learning and it's marginalization and bastardization by the political leadership and consequently the gradual level of its demise. Rather than lampoon Nigerian professors for whatever they earn, they should be pitied for the burden of self-survival they individually carry on their shoulders and the agony of helplessness they suffer day-in-day-out as they see themselves presiding over higher education that used to be the pride of society but has now metamophosed into the biggest joke of all Nigeria's social institutions - right on their watch! We are talking of the gradual death of a sacred institution - education, someone is talking of professors' salaries - leaving the proverbial disease of leprosy untreated but preoccupied with the treatment of mere rshes! Let the big lie die . . .
Michal O. Afolayan
From the Land of LincolnFrom: Abayomi Akinyeye <yakinyeye@yahoo.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 2:49 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigerian professors among best paid in the world
| Those who engage in discussions on this forum shouldd at least be among the informed and not ordinary market women and men. They should take time to be informed by themselves before coming to the public domain to volunteer any opinion. As a Professor in Nigeria and who is knowledgible about the stuggle to improve the academic system in the country, i can say withou any equivocation that no Nigerian Professor earns the amount being touted . --- On Tue, 2/5/13, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
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