Tired perhaps of its conservative stagnation in motivating students with what they deserve, ABU Zaria is back to reality by joining progressive universities in awarding first-class degrees to her deserving students. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read ABU produced over 182 first-class degrees! What happened, what has changed, and who are these students who defied the clutch of heaven standards by breaking the stifling bars of our lecturers who indecorously boasted that first class degree is for God while 2.1 is theirs and 22 grade for the most hardworking students. Such immodest immolation!
You may argue that grades do not measure brilliance but I beg to disagree that if grades aren’t important why do we have them as template of measurement in our educational system? Past ABU students were ingloriously cheated over the years due to the crippling standards of grading students designed by the lecturers. Forget the consoling slogans of ‘We are naturally ahead’, ‘An ABUSITE is a born leader’, and ABU student is a databank of ideas’- regardless of these soothing appellations, the fact is that many ABU graduates take backstage where requirements for first-class degrees become the reference. You can only prove your worth when you have the universal requirements to compete with others.
Except we want to shy away from the reality, the fact remains that ABU has refused to discard the Marxist toga of ‘punitivism ‘ where flexibility is seen as complacency. Teachers are moulders of minds and not gatekeepers of puritanism.
How can you explain the mystery of the Faculty of Social Sciences producing less than 10 first-class graduates in 20 years? What are the measurement standards that over 40,000 students could not scale? Were the students so ineffectual in comprehending thought patterns or it was just the lecturers’ consistency in maintaining the Marxist status quo?
I’m glad the mystery is over as there is a new sheriff in town who from the display of his body language thus far is in for a new paradigm. The interest now is not just to produce perpetually 2.1 and 22 graduates but deserving first-class products as it’s globally prevalent in other universities. ABU cannot continue to brandish the sword of colonial standard of measuring students. This is a new era of entrepreneurship where the regurgitation of classroom theories does not apply to the realities of the outside world.
For Professor Kabiru Bala, the Vice Chancellor, we congratulate you for your innovative leadership of disconnecting from the deprecating past. Indeed an average Abusite is a global brand…
Realistically musing
