Stakeholders at the Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo (RUGIPO), Ondo State, have identified improved staff welfare, ethical conduct and institutional discipline as critical to restoring academic excellence in tertiary institutions.
They made the call at the 8th Public Lecture Series of RUGIPO, themed “RUGIPO Reset: Restoring Trust, Discipline, and Academic Rigour.”
Acting Rector of the polytechnic, Dr Olorunwa Lawson, said the institution had begun a comprehensive reform agenda to reposition it for planned transition to a university. He said the reforms focused on strengthening discipline, promoting ethical conduct and improving teaching, research and learning, urging staff to shun all forms of academic misconduct. He expressed confidence that the reforms would reinforce the institution’s quest for academic excellence and sustainable growth.
Delivering a lecture titled “The Anchor of Excellence: Promoting Ethical Conduct, Discipline, and Moral Values in Higher Institutions of Learning,” an engineering scholar, Dr Olajumoke Ojo, said quality education could only thrive where workers were adequately motivated and ethical standards upheld.
She said improved staff welfare, adequate remuneration and conducive working conditions were essential to boosting productivity among lecturers and other employees in the polytechnic.
Dr Ojo warned that examination malpractice, plagiarism and data falsification had continued to erode the credibility of Nigeria’s higher education system. She said inadequate funding, inconsistent government policies, poor remuneration, weak accountability mechanisms, political interference and insufficient support for ethics education had contributed to unethical practices across tertiary institutions.
She faulted institutional authorities for weak enforcement of regulations, inadequate ethical orientation programmes and poor monitoring of staff and students, urging higher institutions to enforce their codes of conduct, strengthen ethics education, reform curricula and prioritise staff welfare to rebuild confidence in the education system.
In the keynote address, education consultant and chartered accountant, Dr Robert Odewale, challenged lecturers to develop skills beyond their academic qualifications to remain relevant in an increasingly competitive knowledge economy.
“You need to be superior to your paper qualification because once you are not, the market will not need you,” he said.
Dr Odewale attributed the decline in Nigeria’s tertiary education system to decades of underfunding, policy inconsistency and weak mentorship, adding that the sector had struggled since the Federal Government’s funding freeze in 1984.
He also criticised what he described as the growing “handout menace,” accusing some lecturers of reducing entire semester courses into brief notes for commercial purposes at the expense of quality learning.
