Wednesday 25 February 2015

How To Dance Like A Nigerian Lecturer

Lecturing in Nigerian universities is pretty easy(once you've gotten the job though), you just have to follow the following rules I listed below (in no particular order). And you must take these rules seriously if you want to succeed as a Lecturer/Professor in the university

#1 Speak Gibberish Always: You are the Professor - you went to MIT, Stanford, Chelsea FC, University of Ife... And they are just students. Where have they been anyways? What do they know?...
Do not speak in plain English that they will ever understand because if you do, they won't see you as a special person.
When the "over sabi" (the inquisitive) students tries to ask you a question, Scream out loud (this is very important) and say something like "How the hell did you get into this university? You must be a fraud".... (it works all the time)

#2. Frown Always: Whenever you are in class "teaching" do not ever  make any attempt to simper. You must look like the devil because if you don't, your students will not take you seriously. You need to put up a frown always, so they will be scared to death that they would just nod at everything you say and not ask you any question you didn't prepare for.

#3. Fail Students At Will: If more than half of the class passes your course, then you are not a great teacher. You must set your "standards" very high that even God might not scale through.... For example: if a student doesn't solve it the way you did in class, fail him/her. Is he trying to be smarter than you are or what?

You have bragging rights when you fail enough students. It sounds cool to tell your fellow professors that "ha over 50 students registered for my course and only 5 passed". You never can tell you might be nominated for the position of the Vice-Chancellor if you fail more students.

Forget the sarcasm in this article, these happens in our schools especially in our universities. I experienced "all of that" and many went through worse- we all different crazy stories to tell.

Although there are few (less than 2%) lecturers that are actually teaching the way they are meant to,But they are completely overshadowed by the bad ones. And it is a pity that the  system only recognizes the bad ones and encourages them ahead of those that are really teaching.

What do you think is the way out? I love to hear your crazy experiences here too.


Sadiq Daniel is a certified Crazy Writer and Teens Coach that blogs on business, Self- development, Life lessons and Ideas that challenges the status quo... You can pursue him on Twitter: @sadiqspeaks LinkedIn: Sadiq Daniel and Email: Sadiqdaniel@gmail.com