Comments on naijablog: An imaginary monologue from a Nigerian university lecturer

@Soul: What's wrong with teenage twat? First, I l...

2006-10-17T14:03:00.000+01:00

@Soul: What's wrong with teenage twat? First, I love teenage twat, second, it's got such a lively sing-song property, doesn't it?

Teenage twat.
Teenage twat.

See what I mean?

Something to calm your nerves:

A guy calls a horse rancher and says he's sending a friend over to look at a race horse he wants to buy. The rancher says "how will I recognize him?"

"Easy, he's a midget with a speech impediment"

The midget shows up and the rancher asks him if he is looking for a male or female horse.

"A female horth"

So he shows him a prized filly.

"Nith lookin' horth. Can I thee her eyeth?"

So the rancher picks up the midget and gets him eye to eye with the horse. Puts him down.

"Nith eyeth, can I thee her earzth?"

The rancher picks up the little fella again and shows him the horse's ears. Puts him down.

"Hmm, nitrh earzth. Can I thee her mouf?"

The rancher is getting impatient with having to lift the midget every time he asks a question, but he picks him up again and shows him the horse's mouth.

"Hmm, nith mouf, can I thee her twat?"

Totally pissed off at this point, the rancher grabs him under his arm and jams the midget's head as far as he can up the horse's twat, pulls him out and slams him on the ground.

The midget gets up, sputtering and coughing and says, "Perhapth, I should rephrathe that. Can I thee her wun awound a widdle bit?"

the whole system is corrupt there's no where to be...

2006-10-17T06:55:00.000+01:00

the whole system is corrupt there's no where to begin, no one is clean, a terribly sad state. God dey sha

erm shango..in your haste to be funny, you end upc...

2006-10-16T21:03:00.000+01:00

erm shango..
in your haste to be funny, you end upcoming off quite repulsive... even whilst denouncing bad behaviour...

'female twat'? come on... that is such a degrading term used to describe female genitalia.

So you would have loved to afford this PHD some 'compensation' along the same lines hnnh.. come on man..
don't ruin the impact of what you are saying with degrading language and bad jokes.. it's unnecessary

I'm all for female equality: there was this gorgeo...

2006-10-16T16:08:00.000+01:00

I'm all for female equality: there was this gorgeous PhD at UniBen when I attended; I would have loved to afford her the kind of "compensation" you're talking about, but I wager women lecturers don't waste their time thinking too much of silly things like "loss of power and status" then compensating for it by "exercising sexual power" over anyone, except maybe their hapless husbands or boyfriends.

I think I see your point (as a man myself, obviously) from a 50,000-ft perspective of male lecturer frustrations, but wrong is wrong is wrong is wrong. Like Nkem said, there is simply no excuse whatsoever for taking advantage of teenage twat, however fun that is! It's a violation most foul of the tenets of education passed on through the ages.

Okay, I'll step off my soapbox now. Carry on.

I am glad for my certain opportunity at studying i...

2006-10-16T14:56:00.000+01:00

I am glad for my certain opportunity at studying in the UK but at the same time feel an awful shame at the situation. University life here is so different to experiences recounted to me by friends who schooled in Nigeria but at the same time not entirely so.
At the moment, i am experiencing serious difficulties at university due to cock ups within the faculties that share a joint responsibilty for my course and no one seems to know and have appropriate answers to my questions. One of the lecturers even hinted at dissatisfaction (reference the strikes experienced in UK universities last year)amongst the ranks hence the pass-the-buck/dodgy bereaucracy that seems to explain my situation.
All said, there is still decency and decorum. to a certain degree, everyone is answerable to everyone and the lecturer's desire to perform shines through the contstraints of doing his job.
I never went to University in Nigeria but i know there are serious issues there (which i feel i ran away from instead of confronting). I think lecturer behaviour is just one of the primary factors of discussion and not the focal point and until the whole system is revamped, this sort of senarios will continue to be replayed unfortunately.
P.s It is disgusting to see all the government kids here. I stay away from them (i know it could be pathetic to do that)as i want nothing to do with them. They are the products of our shortcomings...wasteful, unintelligent and unfair.

Hmmm. The point wasn't supposed to be about sexua...

2006-10-16T09:35:00.000+01:00

Hmmm. The point wasn't supposed to be about sexual abuse being a consequence of low pay.

It was more to show the sheer degradation male lecturers have gone through in the past 20 years, the key pivot being their loss of power and status being compensated for by exercising sexual power over others in a classic perpetuation cycle (in this patriarchal context, female lecturers are not given the opportunity for such means of compensation). But given that you picked up mainly on the pay aspect, I think it needs a lot more work.

But here's my question: when you try to examine the lives of fallen figures, either you take the 'explain does not mean excuse' or you take the 'explanation excuses' route. The first elicits a sense of tragedy - as with the various forms of blindness of Oedipus. Very rarely would anyone want to take the latter route, to avoid a sense of deterministic justification projected onto events. What other routes could one take?

The key point was to convey a context where a weak individual is almost bound to fail. We then start to see that it is not just the individual, but it is also the context, which is to blame.

Hmmm... interesting monologue. You could make it a...

2006-10-16T06:21:00.000+01:00

Hmmm... interesting monologue. You could make it a performance piece to go along with Eedris Abdulkareem's Mr. Lecturer...

I don't know about this Jeremy. You're taking the ...

2006-10-16T00:53:00.000+01:00

I don't know about this Jeremy. You're taking the "explain does not mean excuse" route, and it doesn't work. Nigerian lecturers aren't the only ones in the world who are badly paid, if it all. Unless there's evidence that not getting paid leads to committing sexual crimes is a phenomenon unique to university lecturers the world over, I remain to be convinced.