NIGERIA

Report exposes universities’ corruption cover-up
A new report by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project has revealed how most allegations of corruption in federal universities in Nigeria – such as unfair allocation of grades, contract inflation, truncation of staff’s salaries on the pay roll, employment of unqualified staff, examination malpractices, sexual harassment and sales of university certificates – have neither been thoroughly investigated nor punished, writes Davidson Iriekpen for This Day.The report titled Stealing the Future: How federal universities in Nigeria have been stripped apart by corruption said: “Impunity for corruption in the university system has negatively affected the governance of federal universities and the quality of education received by the students.” The 58-page report was launched in Lagos on 8 February with the support of the MacArthur Foundation.
The report, which used the University of Lagos and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria as case studies, disclosed that: “Most of the time lecturers miss classes and they never get punished. Getting a job in the universities is not a question of merit but of connections. Ghost workers syndrome is a problem in the universities.”
Full report on the This Day site