Students who just got admitted into various higher institutions of learning, in many scenarios, after leaving the comfort of their respective homes, families and friends, find it a little difficult to blend into the new environment where they meet new friends and new families in form of lecturers and colleagues.
At this instance, in most cases, you find out that students and their lecturers don’t usually maintain supposed cordial relationship wherein the latter is conventionally expected to play numerous fatherly roles such as giving the students a moral and intellectual piece of advice, guiding and counselling them on many issues affecting their lives.
In contrast, unfortunately, most lecturers do not consider the above-mentioned instances as anything but rather go businesslike every time they meet or have contact with their teeming students.
Therefore, it’s imperative for lecturers to guide their students to achieve their primary purpose in tertiary institutions, even though the students’ population of most higher institutions are annually skyrocketing but that doesn’t mean the lecturers should allow the students do whatever they want.
This will add up to the moral uprightness that may have been instilled into the students at their various homes. Indirectly or even directly, this will reduce the innumerable social malaises we are currently facing in our dear country, Nigeria.
It is also obvious that students of the tertiary institutions are more independent compared to when they were in secondary school. This often gives them the air of freedom which makes them engage in nefarious activities ever-present in most higher institutions such as cultism, gangsterism, prostitution etc.
Lecturers are implored to see to these and backup their series of lectures with ‘morally-themed’ admonitions. This will ultimately rekindle the relationship between them and their students.
Inevitably, other societal challenges such as terrorism (Boko Haram and ISWAP), cyber theft (Yahoo Yahoo), kidnapping, robbery, banditry and occult initiation etc will be grossly allayed.
Likewise, it is also of paramount importance for lecturers to have a mutual understanding with their students in matters relating to their academics. They should behave and act like true academicians especially when they are reeling out their various lectures and subsequent educational engagements.
They should teach passionately well as this will invariably enhance and encourage those serious among the students. Unavoidably, this will make the lecturers and the students relate cordially. In turn, if a lecturer fails to treat his students accordingly, they will never appreciate him.
The students too should always hold their lecturers in high regards and revere them as and when due because they (the lecturers) are playing the role of parents to them.
Even, universities or other higher institutions of learning are awarding their students with two concentric, interwoven things – character and learning, even when a student graduates with a first-class degree or topnotch distinction and unfortunately possess despising attitudes towards people, his or her class of degree will be considered unworthy and outlandish.
There are other numerous factors that can cement the relationship between lecturers and students in higher institutions of learning that we cannot exhaust in this concise write-up.
Kasim Isa Muhammad,Mass Communication Department,University of Maiduguri
