Every student goes to the university, determined to get the best results they can get. This, of course, doesn’t entirely go to plan. The bad grades come sometimes, and everyone deals with them differently. This is how we think it goes:

The Grumbler

This student hits the denial stage and struggles to get out of it. They are pretty certain that they can get a bad grade in any course only if someone didn’t do their job right or if the lecturer is out to get them. They grumble and whine to everyone who cares to listen that the result is not a reflection of their performance. The brave ones among them storm off to the lecturer’s office to protest the injustice.

The Spy

They instinctively go on a mission to find out how others performed in the course. They are good with the grade as long as others, especially their friends do badly too. 

The Mathematician 

This student hates to see a bad grade, and the moment they see one, they start to make mental calculations of where their CGPA stood before the exam and how badly the grade will affect it. Also,  they start calculating what they need to get in other courses to bounce back.

The Pretentious Crybaby

This student puts on a show for everyone, making it seem like a bad grade is not much of a big deal and how they couldn’t care less about it. However, the moment they are alone with their thoughts, they break down and curse all the evil forces working overtime to ensure their failure.

The Soldier

Their faces instantly turn into a furnace, threatening to burn anyone who dares to make eye contact the moment they find out that they didn’t get the result they were hoping for. They become irritable, ready to lash out at anyone who crosses their path or seeks to interrupt their brooding – and this can last for days nonstop.

The Unbothered

This student already saw it coming. They know they wrote shit in the exam, so they couldn’t be too bothered about the confirmation of what they’ve known since they turned their answer scripts in. They are the quickest to move on from the results because they know it won’t be the last they will fail.

You, watching returning students struggle for hostel accommodation in your first year

Sorry oh. Could never be me.

When the session is over and you realise that it’s time to leave

So, I’m going to join the struggle next session?

You, contemplating if you should just live off-campus

I can’t stress myself.

When you realise how expensive off-campus accommodation is

Ah, it’s not me and you

How you rush to apply for hostel accommodation when they open the portal

When you hear that you have to ballot

How you look at people who easily get a room because they know the right people

You disgust me.

You, when you eventually get a room

Thank you, God!

When a friend asks if they could squat with you

Errr…

When the porters go on a raid to catch squatters in the night

You people don’t sleep?

When you have to bribe the porters to get away with an offense

Why are you so hungry?

How people who live off the campus look at you

Why are you living in the ghetto?

When the session is over and you have to vacate the room

Is this where it ends? And I’m repeating the process again next session?

Do you remember this guy?

And this guy?

They are the poster boys for two of the biggest sex for marks scandals that have rocked the Nigerian university system recently.

Both of them are disgraced members of academia. In fact, Akindele is currently serving a 2-year prison sentence and Boniface has been suspended by the UNILAG management, following the chilling BBC eye documentary.

One would think that these two high-profile cases would be enough to keep other randy lecturers in check, but apparently, they can’t help themselves.

The latest scandal takes us back to Obafemi Awolowo University where Professor Akindele used to work. 

This time, the attention is on this guy.

Olabisi Olaleye is the newest member of the sexual harassment club. Interestingly, he lectures in the faculty of Administration, which is exactly where the last scandal involving Professor Akindele broke out from.

What happened this time?

According to a report from Premium Times, the embattled lecturer who teaches IRS 305 (Diplomacy) in the department of International Relations allegedly failed one of his students, Motunrayo Afolayan, when she first took the course during 2017/2018 session. 

When she took the course again in the following session, she was still riddled with threats from the lecturer. Something in the line of “if I don’t have my way with you, you will fail this course again.”

Like the other two disgraced lecturers, an interesting piece of technology exposed Olaleye. During one of their meetings, Motunrayo Afolayan discreetly recorded their conversation, securing hard evidence to use against the randy lecturer.

The university management got involved and they set up a panel to investigate the veracity of Motunrayo’s claims. Of course, Mr Olaleye denied that he harassed the student, telling a story about how she (Motunrayo) had approached him to ‘to alter the examination timetable when the rerun course had clashed with another course she takes at 400 level.’

Thankfully, it doesn’t look good for Olaleye. The Punch reports that the university has slashed his salary by 50%, pending the report of the panel.

While news of sexual harassment may continue to break out of our campuses, it’s sort of refreshing that the perpetrators are increasingly likely to be held accountable, punished and disgraced. That’s got to count for something

In small parts, everyone who went to a Nigerian tertiary institution has been looking forward to graduation since their second year in the school. After the exams that need to be written and passed, another thing that stands in the way of graduation is the final year project. It should be a straight line; get a supervisor and carry out some research to fulfil the partial requirements for the degree, but a lot happens before this happens.

When the supervisor list comes out and you get that lecturer everyone tries to avoid

Oh God! It’s over before it even started.

When your supervisor starts to list all the terms and conditions you have to accept before they can supervise you

Ah! All this because of research no one will read. But this is not a contract now.

And they ask you for your proposed research topics

Pahdin? Aren’t you supposed to help me with that?

When they chase you out and ask you to come back when you are serious

This is the end. I’m going to have an extra year

How you start researching all research options

My parents will kill me if they have to pay school fees for another year.

When you go back to them with a topic and they throw it out because it’s not their area of speciality

Just kill me.

When they finally give you a topic to research after a series of back and forth 

What kind of cruel person are you? Why couldn’t you lead with this?

When you’re still battling with research proposal and your mates are already on  literature review

Do they have better supervisors or am I just lazy, dumb, or both?

The short-lived joy when your research topic finally gets accepted

Hallelujah!!! My God lives.

When they ask you to reprint a whole chapter because they corrected something in one page

Chill out now. Printing these things out cost money.

When you finally reach chapter three and have to start begging people to fill your questionnaire 

Help me now, so that someone else will help you when it’s your turn.

When you realise how much data analysis cost if you don’t want to do it yourself

Is this thing designed to test our knowledge or to take money from us?

When your supervisor finally approves all five chapters and ask you to print the final copy

It’s over, bitches. I’m out of here man.

The 2019 Call to Bar Ceremony held last week. Law students after years of studying law and going to the law school eventually became lawyers. If you weren’t cut off from the internet for whatever reason, chances are that you were hit with an overload of pictures of these people, celebrating their rite of passage into the legal profession – a culmination of years of hard work and honest toil.

Sweet story, but there is a chance that you weren’t too bothered. Maybe this will pique your interest. 

First, how much do you know about the University of Ibadan? 

It is the first University in Nigeria, and it is usually paraded as the best, especially by members of its faculties. We can all agree that it is the first, but there is no consensus on how highly the school ranks in the grand scheme of things. 

However, the name usually sits at the top of the Nigerian University Commission Ranking. Also, Time Higher Education, in their 2020 World University Ranking, placed the school among the top 600 universities in the world, only behind Covenant University which found a spot in the top 500. And oh, by the way, only four Nigerian universities made the top 1000.

Now, UI might just have something new to be proud of and probably use as new material and basis to justify their penchant for “The First and The Best” mantra. And that’s the performance of its alumni at the 2019 Bar exams.

Okay, cool story, but what’s the fuss?

For starters, this accounts for the most number of first-class per school recorded in the 2019 Bar Exams.

This is where it gets interesting.

A total number of 5689 Law graduates from different Nigerian universities wrote the exams. According to the Vice-Chancellor, University of Ibadan, Professor Idowu Olayinka, in a Facebook post, only 150 out of this bunch are University of Ibadan products. 2.6 per cent of the entire population were UI students.

147 people graduated from the Nigerian Law School with first-class grades. This number is shared among 35 universities, and 26 of these people are UI law graduates.

To put this in context, Obafemi Awolowo University grads were the closest to UI in this race, with 13 people on the list. Babcock and the University of Nigeria share the spoils of third place with 10 people from each school on the list.

Let’s tie the numbers together and bring this home. The reason this news is making the rounds is that while the UI law graduates are only 2.6 per cent of the 5689 that sat for the exam, they made up 17.7 per cent of the 147 that made the first-class.

Mad Ting.

The fifth line of the second stanza of the UI anthem reads: “greatness won with honest toil” and this perfectly sums up the feat recorded by its alum in the Bar Exams. UI graduates seem to have earned the right to have some moment in the spotlight. Talk is cheap, but these 26 guys should take a bow; they’ve done more than just talk.

The Confusion that follows the release of the exam timetable

You begin to wonder how the weeks flew so fast. As far as you know, the semester started about three weeks earlier. The question that clouds your mind at this point is “where did the time go?”

The pressure of assignments due to be submitted soon

Because you are an acolyte of procrastination, you will never be caught getting started on an assignment early and work on it at a comfortable pace. Now, exams are starting in about 2 weeks, and you have a legion of assignments you will be turning in in this period too – assignments you haven’t done one bit of work on.

Then you struggle with the fact that you’ve not studied in weeks

You remember that the last time you studied anything remotely related to academics was the first week into the semester. You’d promised yourself to be a model student at the beginning of the semester and get your grades up, but that was a promise you were going to renege on. After all, school na scam.

When the day to your first exam draws closer and ASUU or your School SU haven’t made a play

This is bad news for you because they are the only ones you can depend on to start something that will disrupt the calendar and give you more time to study.

When you realise the numbers of tutorials and all-nighters you will need to pull before you catch up

The voluminous materials you have won’t read themselves, so you find study groups to attend during the days and night classes for the nights.

And how much caffeine you will need for that

You find studying all-night a tedious thing to do, but you have no choice. To pull this off, you need caffeine your system. You hear Nescafe works all the time, and you go for it. If you are leaning towards the extreme, you mix Nescafe with a bottle of Coke.

When the school power supply becomes erratic

This is surely an impediment to your all-nighter plans. But you always find a way to work through it.

When you are seated for your first exam and the instructions only are enough to send you into a fit

Now, you are in the exam hall, rethinking all the wrong decisions you’ve made all semester. The invigilator passes the sheets and instructs you to flip over. You subdue a scream when you see the instruction. “Answer question 1 and any other 3 questions. There are 5 questions in all.

You would think that getting into the university or any other tertiary institution, really means you’re about to have the wildest time of your life. This may be true, depending on your energy and the company you keep. However, the school system, in some ways, is designed to take your life (not literally), and you would understand this if you have to or have had to go for early morning classes – usually 8 AM. It’s actually really hard to keep up with them, especially considering the fact that you never go to bed as early as you should.

You will relate to this if you’ve ever had to deal with the evils of 8 A.M classes:

You set about 5 different alarms because when is one ever enough?

Your 8 A.M classes make you doubt the control you have over important things such as sleep. You want to get to your class as early as you can, but your relationship with sleep is a hurdle you have to cross. This is where the alarm comes in; you try to be proactive and set up different alarms, usually 10-20 minutes apart to avoid stories that touch.

When you wake up sometime and realise that you still have some time

Nothing gives you greater joy than when you wake up sometime in the earliest hours of the morning and realise that you still have some more time to bury yourself deep inside the covers. The time you have left is not that much, but you will take it. You will take anything.

The irritation that hits when the first alarm goes off

Now, it’s 6 A.M – time to get up, but you just got to the sweetest part of your sleep. It’s funny, but at that moment, you wonder why you set up the alarm in the first place. You fall into the “I have more time” trap and turn on your side to another part of the bed.

You do a mental analysis of everything you stand to lose

The thing is you can’t go off to actual sleep anymore. All you now do as you toss from one side to the other is to try to decipher if you really have more time or if you are just setting yourself to fail. Or if you should just forget about going to class totally; you only need 75 % attendance anyway.

You hit the snooze again and will the alarm not to go off anymore

You are in doubt now, and if anything, that should be enough reason for you to get up. But no, not today. The alarm goes off again and you let your forefinger or thumb do the work and you slide to snooze.

At this point, your fingers are literally wrapped around your phone, waiting for the next time you will have to slide and snooze.

You eventually open your eyes wide enough to see the amount of light in your room

When your bed sorts of releases its hold on you, you realise how much time you’ve lost playing dead. The first pointer to that fact is the streak of light that filters into your room. You dreamily check the time and it’s 7:30 AM.

The rampage that follows

Finally, you have a reason to jump out of bed. The following minutes are usually a blur because you will work yourself into a frenzy to make up for the lost time. You might get lucky and get to your lecture room just in time. Or not. If the universe is really out to get you; your lecturer could be in a bad mood, refuse you entry, and give the early beds a test.

You promise yourself not to take such risks anymore, but that’s a promise you’re going to break sometime. It’s a cycle you can’t end.

Your parents had a lot to tell you when you were going off to the university, but the one thing they kept hammering on was the need for you to face your academics squarely and not allow some boy or girl to make you lose focus. Deep inside you were like LOL. You had a lot of exploring to do, and you would be damned if you let your parents, who wouldn’t be there, by the way, stop you. You were on a mission to meet the love of your life.

And yes, you tried to do that. But most of them followed a pattern, something like this:

The Introduction

The universe brought you together; that was the only way to explain it. You didn’t understand how, but the readings were off the charts. Contact was made and numbers were exchanged. Subsequently, there were lots of late-night calls and texts, evening walks, and a load of spontaneous stuff.

The Honeymoon

You had gone out a couple of times, and every date had been near perfect. You were almost inseparable now. Your friends knew you were a thing already, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Doses of Reality

You had your first fight. You made up. The second one happened, you made up still. But things were not as smooth as they used to be. You were always at each other’s throat now, finding faults in almost everything. You tried to work things out every time, but the routine was becoming way tiresome. You wondered what the attraction was in the first place. Slowly, you began to realise how much you’d played yourselves.

The Big Fall-Out

It turned out that the fights you had earlier were preparing you for the big one. This was the grand finale; the sum total of every shit you’d made each other go through. You decided to talk it out like the adults you were. By the end of the conversation, the words were said: “I think you are amazing, but we need to take a break”

And that was it. Hearts were broken. Your parents were right. But hey, it was fun while it lasted, and so did the others.