Weirdest things about Nigerian universities

While working on my project yesterday morning I had random flashbacks of the stress I went through during my university days, the sleepless nights, studying for hours, the weirdness of our university system; weird laws, lecturers behaving like gods, and yada yada. This inspired me to write this article based on my personal experience and my view of these universities.

"Disclaimer: this article is only intended for fun and to share my personal experience, not to tarnish the image of the schooling system in Nigeria".

Let’s have some fun, here we go!

Lead image from unsplash.com

What exactly is the acceptance fee?

Ever since I gained admission into the university I had always wondered what the acceptance fee is meant for, are we paying the school for accepting us as students or paying the school because we accepted the admission given to us? In fact I paid an acceptance fee of 51,000 (fifty one thousand) Naira on gaining admission into my university, this amount was twice the school fee at the time of gaining admission. I don’t know if schools in other countries do this, but it’s something I’ve always found weird because we still had to pay the school fee and other hidden fees. Lots of laughter! @HappyBoy how much was your acceptance fee when you got into the university?

The hidden fees                    

Regardless of what school you attend in Nigeria, there are always hidden fees. For instance faculty fee is already a part of the school fee breakdown yet I remember paying the faculty fee every semester regardless of the initial payment. Non-payment means we couldn’t do the necessary per-semester clearance.

We paid for library use yet still had to pay for registration at the library or we wouldn’t be able to get a library identity card. Funny thing is I never entered the library till I graduated, I’ve got no idea how it looks.

The Health Center fee is a part of the initial school fee paid on gaining admission yet I remember paying an extra sum of 3000 (three thousand) Naira during my first year registration at the university health center. Scams here and there, I laugh in Japanese (lol).

Reparation fee ahead of damage

In the breakdown of our school fee which usually consists of tuition fee, faculty fee, health center, library fee, and so on, there’s also something we call a reparation fee (money paid  in case of damages whether accidental or deliberately). I actually find it funny that students have to pay a reparation fee as a part of the school fee ahead of potential damages, but If damages took place at some point during the semester the student at fault still had to pay a reparation fee regardless of whether it had been paid as a part of the school fee or not. Isn’t that a fraudulent act? Bitter truth is there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Every lecturer says you will fail

“You will fail this course” is a common slang by almost every lecturer in Nigerian universities. Our lecturers tend to see themselves as gods, like they’ve got the power to do whatever pleases them and no one can do anything about it. Most Nigerian lecturers will tell you that you can’t have an A In his course. The common slang is; A is for God, B is for my wife and C is for any student that can study heard, while other scores below C belong to the lazy students and not so intelligent students. @Princessbusayo should understand, she talks about these a lot.

Some private universities don’t accept smart phones

You may find it weird but some private universities do not allow their students use smartphones in the 21st century, it’s the strangest thing ever. They claim the internet is a source of evil and juvenile delinquency among the youth hence they want to discipline their students and bla bla bla. How do they expect them to get solution to assignment, interact with the outside world and get the necessary exposure? The students are not allowed to leave the school premises, neither are they allowed to be awake after the general light out. I consider it the most absurd thing ever, treating university students like they’re in kindergarten, these peeps are meant to be adults and not controlled experiments in a lab.

I know a university (name withheld) that doesn’t allow its students eat meat because they’re training them to be vegetarians, neither do they allow them tae soft drinks like coke or Pepsi cos’ they believe it contains alcohol that could cause students to misbehave. This is what I call “lack of exposure in its highest”.

Seats are never enough

Believe me when I tell you that the number of admitted students each year is always more than the available resources, seats are never enough- students mostly hang around the lecture theaters so they could listen to the lectures through the windows, the lecture theaters are smaller than the number of students it is meant to occupy, and the marker boards are always so small that you’d hardly see anything even when you sit at the front of the class.

Public address systems were never available hence the lecturers have to shout at the top of their voice to reach….. Yeah, you guessed right, to reach just half of the entire students in the class.

We had to line up to make some payments

During my first year I had basically the worst experience ever; the entire faculty of science which consisted of over two thousand students had to line up in the sun to pay for a certain fee which they called “third party fee”, till today I have no idea what that means but I’m glad I survived.

I lined up in the sun for about two hours, and it was coincidental that I was going through a series of stomach pain since the beginning of the week due to changes in environment and water. The water over there is terrible, had stomach pain for weeks before I finally adapted. I had no choice but to join the line and stayed in the blood draining sun while the stomach pain was simultaneously draining my life force, I’m glad I survived. I sometimes wonder, if @Olasquare and @King_Gozie went through the same thing?

Conclusion

Though my university days were super stressful, the fun was also there, and flashing through the memories makes me laugh. If I had the power, I wouldn’t allow anyone go through the same thing I went through.

Thanks for reading!

Feel free to share your experience.

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