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Students' Deviancein Nigerian TertiaryInstitutions: AnObservationPatrick Edobor Igbinovia aa Criminology and Criminal Justice ,University of Benin , Benin City , NigeriaPublished online: 27 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Patrick Edobor Igbinovia (1997) Students' Deviancein Nigerian Tertiary Institutions: An Observation, International Journal ofAdolescence and Youth, 7:1, 83-92, DOI: 10.1080/02673843.1997.9747812

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International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 1997, Volume 7, pp. 83-92 0267-3843/97 $10 © 1997 A B Academic Publishers Printed in Great Britain

Students' Deviance in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions: An Observation

Patrick Edobor Igbinovia

Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

The definition of deviant behaviour is elusive; but I will adopt a simple one; deviance is behaviour that violates the norms and expectations of a group. The first mention of the concept Sociology of deviant behaviour can be traced to Marshall B. Clinard, an American sociologist, who wrote a book of the same title about 37 years ago (1957). Indeed, Clinard's book was the first textbook in deviant behaviour and it provided the first codification of the deviant behaviour perspective. Consequently, in tackling the subject before us, emphasis throughout will be on the sociological understanding of the meaning, the process, and the control of deviant behaviour of students in institutions of higher learning in Nigeria.

The layman considers that social deviation is 'bad' by nature, and has no positive values. The reality, though, is that social deviation is both functional and dysfunctional to society. People however talk more on the dysfunctional (as opposed to the functional) aspects of deviant behaviour of students in tertiary institutions. It is the dysfunctional aspect of deviant behaviour that get to be headline news in newspapers and television. They are more interesting to listen to and read about. However, a balanced discussion of deviant behaviour of students in tertiary institutions must include a mention of some of the functional aspects. First, a discussion of some of the dysfunctional aspects of deviant behaviour of students in tertiary institutions in Nigeria. These dysfunctional aspects of deviant behaviour can be broken down into four categories:

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(a) students and examination malpractices; (b) students and secret cults; (c) students and violence; and (d) students unrest.

Students and Examination Malpractices

An example of deviant behaviour exhibited by students in tertiary institutions in Nigeria come in the shape of examination malpractice. Examination malpractice refers to cheating in examinations designed to get unearned marks and pass examinations. Some of the most common methods which students employ in cheating involve outright purchase of exam question papers from teachers or those in custody of the questions (either by cash, sex, gifts or a combination), spying, copying from materials smuggled into exam halls, swapping scripts, use of bullets/ missiles/ dubbing/ walkie-talkie/ micro­computers, writing on clothes/ desks/body /handkerchief/ toilet paper, impersonating, contracting and leaking of examination questions.

Some of the factors which have been identified as encouraging students to engage in examination malpractice are connivance of students and lecturers, multiple entrances and exits into exam halls, cooperation among students not to report cases of cheating, close spacing of seats in exam halls, shortage of manpower, poor supervision and invigilation, overcrowding, scarcity of institutional materials, admissions of academic invalids, low teacher morale and moral, laziness on part of students, unconducive study conditions, frequent and indiscriminate closure of tertiary institutions and condensed academic calendar, and the prevailing moral decadence in the country.

Although Decree No.2 of 1984 stipulates a 21-year jail term for culprits as deterrent for examination malpractice, rarely have tertiary institutions in Nigeria referred cases of exam malpractice to the Miscellaneous Offences Tribunal for trial. Instead, tertiary institutions have resorted to internal Examination Malpractice Committees to deal with such cases. Punitive measures which have been evoked against culprits include rustication, cancellation of papers which the student registered for during the semester in which the offence was committed and expulsion. Lecturers who aid and abet examination malpractice are sometimes demoted, retired or sacked.

To stem the tide of examination malpractice in tertiary

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institutions in Nigeria, a battery of proposals designed to discourage potential offenders have been proffered. These include the need for students to possess valid identification cards, answer booklets to carry on every page the number of the booklet cover, course teachers not to serve as chief invigilators, introduction of centralized invigilation scheme, restriction of exams attendants to non-invigilation functions, increasing the number of invigilators in an exam hall, and blocking all but one entrance into the exam halls.

Students and Secret Cults

Fear is a powerful psychological energizer; it can also be a great demobilizer. Members of secret cults seem to understand and appreciate the impact of this elementary psychology and do indeed use it to the fullest. An important aspect of this operation, therefore, is to strike fear and terror into the minds of fellow students in order to destabilize and demobilize them. Their victims are thus dehumanized and terrorized to submission. It is, therefore, not surprising that students are afraid even to mention the names of secret cult members for fear of being found out and subsequently victimized.

Some of the secret cults which operate in our tertiary institutions are Bats, Mgba Mgba, Klansman Konfraternity, Fangs, Vikings, Pyrates, Black Axe, Black Cross, Black Cats, Eiye, Buccaneers, Mafia, and Maphites. Cult memberships cut across different campuses of our tertiary institutions. Members meet late at night in hotel rooms, aecluded bushes, and in abandoned and uncompleted buildings. Usually, when these groups strike, they use members of their groups who are in other tertiary institutions.

Recruitment into these cults is by subtle advertisements and by individual approaches. In this regard, family ties, old school boy ties, neighbourliness etc. are exploited to the maximum. Prospective members are students who have something to contribute to the organizations by way of their social connections and material possession or body build.

In order to become a member, an applicant is made to undergo an initiation which involves the paying of registration/ membership fees, oaths of secrecy, going through strenuous ordeals and ingestion of strange intoxicating concoctions. All this happens in the night in the eerie surroundings of a secluded cover. Those candidates who fail the test are either fired or

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rejected, while those who pass become full members. By this recruitment exercise, which is at its peak during the first semester, membership of the club is maintained and sometimes enlarged.

Students tend to be attracted to secret cults for a number of reasons. Among these reasons are easy access to girls, protection from harassment and intimidation, quest for power and privileges, derivation of material benefits, avenues for excitement, assistance to pass exams, desire to be respected/known, ignorance and sheer inquisitiveness, display of bravado and machismo, to boost self-esteem and to get a sense of security and safety. It appears, therefore, that there are perceived pressures in Nigerian tertiary institutions which drive some students into joining secret cults.

Secret cults are banned in all tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Consequently, they are unregistered organizations; and punitive action against members of the nefarious organizations have traditionally consisted of rustication and expulsion. Rustication as a disciplinary measure against secret cult members seem to have lost its punitive import to students because, among nocturnal group members, a rusticated student is regarded as a hero. In the light of this, authorities of tertiary institutions are now expelling students found guilty of membership in illegal societies.

Efforts aimed at curtailing nocturnal activities on campus involves the creation of avenues for students to dissipate their energies on some recreational and creative activities, mounting of vigorous campaigns to enlighten parents and their wards about the dangers of rejoining secret cults, establishment of Guidance and Counselling Units to tackle personal and social problems facing students, involvement of parents of students in curbing nocturnal activities and signing of undertaking by parents that their ward is not a member of and shall not join any secret cult, alerting students not to join societies and organizations that are not registered, exchange of information between authorities in tertiary institutions on nocturnal group activities and establishment of a Student Job Scheme to enable needy students work and earn a living.

Students and Violence

Violence perpetrated by students in times of students unrest has been a long-standing feature of Nigerian tertiary institutions. A number of reasons can be adduced for students' resort to violence

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in pressing their demands. Foremost among them is that there is the thinking among students that ultimatum and violence or threat of it are the only 'language' to which the authorities can be compelled to listen. Implicit in this opinion is that there is ineffective communication between the students and the authorities and that the students needs are not met promptly.

Generally, violence on campus are of three broad types: student-on-student violence, student-on-lecturer violence and student destruction of property during demonstration. furthermore, violence by students occurs in varied forms such as 'obtaining' or extorting money, food, clothing and jewellery from students with threats; rape of female students, physical assaults on students and academic staff. Resort to violence by students could also be caused by personal quarrels among students, group rivalry, battle for supremacy among rival groups and over the possession or seduction of a girlfriend, reporting exam malpractice to lecturer and failing to pass the exams of certain lecturers. Third parties (usually another nocturnal group) may receive ransom and support one of the warring groups.

Indeed, it appears that the various forms of violence on campus are masterminded and perpetrated in the majority of cases by members of nocturnal organizations. When they are not engaged in intra-gang wars, they are visiting violence on law abiding students. In cases of physical assaults involving stabbing, the weapons commonly used are daggers, knives, broken bottles and small axes. On rare occasions, pistols have been used.

Students found guilty of physical assaults are often reprimanded or warned. In severe cases, such students are either rusticated or expelled from the tertiary institution or are referred to the police for criminal prosecution. Assault on lecturers are generally met with dismissal from institution.

STUDENTS UNREST

Students unrest is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria. It began in the 1960s and has remained unabated, with the spate of crises in recent times. It is now more of a yearly phenomenon, a ritual that must be conducted before the end of each academic session.

Students unrest involves mass rally/ demonstration, boycott of lecturers, barricade of entrances and exists to campus, chanting of war songs, display of placards, confrontation with the police and sometimes destruction of property.

From historic evidence, students unrest is always informed by

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the difficult circumstances students face-which ranges from acute accommodation problems, infringements on students' fundamental human rights to unpalatable governmental policies, programmes and pronouncements. Indeed, perhaps, the oldest students unrest in Nigeria was in 1962. It originated from the University College, lbadan, over the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact. The students were opposed to the Pact which they felt mortgaged our sovereignty and independence to Britain. The resultant demonstration led to the abrogation of the defence pact.

Generally, the response of authorities of tertiary institutions to students unrest is to ban student unions, close down the institutions, ask students to go home, call the police, and to set up a panel to investigate the immediate and remote causes of the disturbance and to make necessary recommendations to prevent recurrence. When the panel report is submitted to the authorities of tertiary institutions, punitive measures are then taken against some of the students perceived as ring leaders and instigators of such demonstration. They are either rusticated, expelled or made to lose certain privileges. In addition, while spirited efforts are made by the authorities to redress the grievances of the students, the students are also asked to pay for damages to property, facilities and equipment on campus. For this purpose, students are surcharged some fees to cover cost of repairs and replacement to damaged facilities.

Whether students unrest and student belligerency are internal or external in origin, the leadership of the affected campus must seek immediate solutions to them. In cases of externally-induced crises while the institutional leadership may not be overly active- an initiative usually has to come from the government, especially where government policy is the issue at stake, the leadership must however, parley with leaders of the students so as to persuade them to quickly reach accord with the government and return the campus to normalacy.

The management demand of internally induced crisis is more within the control of the leadership of the affected campus. To quicken rational discourse on our campus, it is important to multiply the avenues of dialogue between students and administrators. Students should be represented on major decision-making bodies, including the Senate of tertiary institutions, and their views should be listened to and taken seriously. In addition, the chief executive of tertiary institutions has to call on his/her repertoire of personal ingenuity, will, tact, diplomacy and human understanding and advice of his aides to manage student crisis.

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Function of Deviant Behaviour

As mentioned earlier, deviant behaviour also has positive values. A look at history confirms this statement. For instance, modem science emerged only when men felt free to question the doctrine of Aristotle and the Church. Socrates challenged the basic beliefs of the Greek society of his time; his particular sin was that he believed that correct action implied correct thought. He was sentenced to death (by hemlock) for his contention that the rulers of Athens did not know how to rule.

Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic Church for his work in astronomy and his support of the Copernican theory that the earth moves around the sun. Galileo was forced to recant his teachings about astronomy. It is ironic that Galileo died in 1642, the year in which Isaac Newton was born. Some historians of science attribute the shift of the scientific movement from Italy to England to the action of the Catholic Church against Galileo. At any rate, the major developments in science did occur in England, with Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, and Charles Darwin.

Michael Servetus was burned at the stake by John Calvin for his studies of the circulation of the blood. The Hungarian physician, Semmelweis discovered that child-birth fever (puerperal fever) was spread by the attending physicians through their dirty, infected hands and that this deadly plague could be stopped by the simple procedure of physicians washing their hands. For this, he was driven to an insane asylum by his contemporaries.

Socrates, Semmelweis, Scopes, Mendel, etc. were all rebels and deviants in their time. Yet their contributions to scientific thought and development is still with us to this day.

With specific reference to Nigeria, one can say that deviant behaviour of students in tertiary institutions in the country, when properly managed and harnessed (divorced of destruction, death and anarchy), have had some salutary effects. These positive effects could be generally exemplified in the following ways:

(1) Some of the far-reaching efforts to improve the welfare of students and the citizenry has been influenced by student agitations;

(2) Deviant behaviour on the part of the students alert the public to a greater awareness of their common interests;

(3) Deviant behaviour exhibited by students call attention to things which could have been taken for granted or ignored;

(4) The display of deviant behaviour by students helps to set

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limits beyond which students as a group will not tolerate violation;

(5) A certain amount of deviance can serve as a safety valve for students; and this prevents excessive discontent and alleviates some of the strains on tertiary institutions;

(6) Deviant behaviour among students serves as a warning or signal of some basic defects within institutions. Through the commission of a deviant act, the deviant helps to expose the inadequacies or defects of the system and in the process helps to fine-tune the system;

(7) Some amount of deviance by students may provide a mechanism for expedient action which would not have been possible when rules and regulations are followed; and deviant behaviour by students helps to call attention to injustice and the need to redress social wrongs in our body polity.

Indeed, through the commission of deviant acts by students, the consciousness of Nigerian citizens could be raised and injustices corrected. Therefore, when the students see poverty among the majority while a few wallow in affluence, where they see conspicuous consumption by the privilege, where they see fraud and corruption, where they see nepotism and ethnicity being used as determinants for employment and promotion rather than the application of merit, the student who may be said to constitute the conscience of our nation begin to question the morality and the nature of a society that allows these kinds of destructive processes to exist.

In sum, great discoveries and grand developments in the political, social, economic, and scientific spheres of life have evolved because people dare to be different, to dissent, to rebel, and to deviate from the status quo ante. We submit that without some dose of deviance there can be no meaningful progress or development; without deviance life would be a drag, robotic, boring, unchallenging and stagnate; indeed, we are persuaded that where there is total conformity there can be no improvements in our quality of life.

CONCLUSION

Let us end this discussion on a humorous, yet serious note. What motivates students in tertiary institutions to engage in deviant acts? As we have seen, the causes of deviant behaviour among

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students are multi-faceted- ranging from the trivial to the bizarre. Here is an example of what appears trivial. A mother once complained about her daughter's participation in students unrest over food. She said:

Indeed, this strike is a disgrace if it were really over food. My daughter needed merely to write to me and I would send her a ball or two of kerkey and some corn flour. I told her never to mind the postage. But to write whenever there is the need for food.

As an example of what seem bizarre, Africa's elder statesmen like the late President Tubman of Liberia dismissed students deviance as being the result of mothers who have stopped breastfeeding their babies. 'They begin feeding babies (as adults) as soon as they are born'. So, concluded the late patriarch, 'they develop a cow's instinct'.

Whether these explanations for the phenomenon are simplistic, trivial or bizarre, they demonstrate one thing, however. That is: Anything under the sun can trigger off deviant behaviour among students in Nigerian tertiary institutions. Where does this leave us? We can only hope that change is possible in these institutions. When seen from the dominant consciousness it is, perhaps, an unreasonable goal; but to paraphrase that former juvenile delinquent, George Bernard Shaw:

Reasonable men and women adopt themselves to the world. Unreasonable men and women seek to change it. Therefore, all progress depends upon those who are willing to strive for the unreasonable.

FOOTNOTE

1. Pieces of papers containing possible answers to examination questions which are squeezed and shaped like balls ('bullets') and are thrown ('missiles') from one student to the other for use during examinations.

REFERENCES

Clinard, M.B. (1957). Sociology of Deviant Behaviour. Holt, Rinehart and Winston; New York.

Igbinovia, P.E. (1988). Dissent Becomes Deviance In Nigeria. Indian Journal of Criminology, 16, 2, July.

Igbinovia, P.E. (1988). Ritual Murders in Nigeria. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 32, 1.

Jeffery, C.R. (1980). Sociology and Criminology: The Long Lean Years of the Unthinkable and the Unmentionable. In Taboos in Criminology (E. Sagarin, ed.). Sage Publications; Beverly Hills.

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Madam Altastes (1977). Madam Altastes and the Students. West Africa, August 22, 1725.

Michalowski, R. (1985). Order, Law and Crime. An Introduction to Criminology. Random House; New York.

Momoh, E. (1983). West Africa's Restive Students. West Africa, April 18; 933-934.

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