*Of "Fake Professors," Gullible Nigerians, and the NUC*
by Prof. Okey Iheduru
Arizona State University, USA
There's a lot that could be written in response to the 5-year old screed about "fake professors" that has generated so much uproar, and probably elicited the recent circulation of NUC's so-called "directory of full professors in Nigeria." Nigerians are mostly and patently gullible. They love to inhale any putrid dished out by any lunatic out there about our universities to rubbish our lecturers.
Despite the denunciation of this arrant nonsense by the National Universities Commission (NUC) -- as rotten as NUC is -- people continue to expose their ignorance by circulating this falsehood. If Nigerians care to look, they will discover - as if they don't already know - that most people who join the academy tend to be the most brilliant students in their class, from primary school to the university. How does anyone believe that these folks who pride themselves on their superior intelligence and their accomplishments would harbor "fake professors" in their midst? The only place where "fake professors" might exist in a university would be in the Accounts Departments where someone might insert fake names (read: "ghost workers") as a strategy to steal from payroll funds from the institutions. Otherwise, anyone who understands the internal dynamics of academe would quickly laugh off this idiotic publication and the unimaginative reactions of Nigerians to a falsehood that will further damage the image of Nigeria around the world.
For me, this unfortunate furore is traceable to NUC's follies and mindless mission-creep. The agency has been run for decades by people who shouldn't be anywhere near a university. The NUC and its centralizing tendencies are a major reason for the challenges facing Nigerian universities. If you're looking for "fake professors," look not beyond the CVs of recent occupants of the office of NUC Executive Secretary. Just google them on the Google Scholar site and find out how many citations their scholarship has garnered, compared to some professors at any university in Nigeria.
The rain began to beat us, to paraphrase the late Chinua Achebe and his Igbo people, in 2019 when the NUC published the first of what it calls the "database" of professors in Nigeria -- a useless but money-making exercise for the mafia that runs agency. These publications imply that anyone whose name is not on their "database" shouldn't be recognized as a professor. How ignorant could these people be, square pegs in a round hole supervising Nigeria's university system!
The reality is that promotions and/or recruitment or appointments into the professorial ranks is a dynamic process. Universities everywhere in the world routinely conduct internal and external reviews of candidates who apply to be promoted to professorial ranks. The review process takes 6-12 months; sometimes more than a year! Each candidate is generally reviewed by 5-10 experts in the candidate's area of scholarly focus recruited from both local and foreign universities who have no conflict of interest with the candidate. The external evaluations are combined with departmental and Faculty/College level committees' confidential evaluations in the home university to enable upper-level administration to make a decision whether or not the candidate deserves promotion to the professor rank! Few people outside the academy can figure out how this evaluation process works, but they're quick to make comments that expose their ignorance.
Universities also hire professors from other institutions at any time, though rarely; just as they sometimes flush out impostors, mostly those who lack the qualifications they claim to have or those who present "fake" or spurious credentials. But this is a rarity.
Here in the United States where I have been a full professor for almost 20 years, courts rarely second-guess the decisions of universities regarding denial of tenure or promotion cases because the jury of non-academics in a trial will have difficulty understanding how each academic unit makes a determination about the quality of the research, teaching, and service requirements for university teachers. Criteria for professorship also vary significantly from one university or college to the other, depending on the prestige, status, mission, and other values of each institution. *That you are a full professor in University A does not mean that University B will automatically recognize that rank should you seek employment in the latter institution!* This used to be the case decades ago in Nigeria when our universities used to care about quality and prestige.
So, even though NUC has denounced the "fake professors" gabbage, a few questions may still be in order here. When did it become the responsibility of NUC to evaluate, appoint, or refuse to appoint professors? A "database" that takes 6-12 months to publish will inevitably omit those who have recently been promoted or appointed to that rank. And when has any Nigerian state agency, especially the massively corrupt and incompetent NUC, published "accurate" figures?
Universities are complex organizations with cultures and traditions that could make non-initiates dizzy. There are reasons and an order to their madness and mystique. Yet, as human institutions, they have their share of bad eggs. That doesn't warrant the flipancy and glee with which we relish trashing Nigerian universities. It would be a welcome change if we tried to understand how these centers of learning operate. Your mother's egusi soup may not be a candidate for the Soup of the Year award, but she's still your Mama. Don't trash her, folks.☺️
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