UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION IN NIGERIA: HISTORY, ETHICS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Abstract

Purpose: This paper is an exploratory work focusing on university administration in practice. The study interrogates ethics and practice of university administration in Nigeria, vis-à-vis service-delivery. It captures and exemplifies the nature and elements of university administration as experienced in the contemporary Nigerian polity, making references to aspects of industrial and organizational psychology, human factor psychology, and others, in the context of diverse interrelationships between theory and practice. It reverts to antecedents of administrative practice, and draws attention to observed infractions in the contemporary devoir, and in corporate governance. Methodology: The research design is descriptive, focusing on answering the how, what, when and where, (i.e. in addition to why) thus, providing rooms for examination of historical evidences, theoretical relevance and practical algorithms. A survey is conducted to validate our stance on compromised standards, and to posit measures that re-assert good practice, using the qualitative research method to succinctly describe the research problem by observing the dialectical nuances of the work environment and drawing far-reaching conclusions on the contemporary state of management and administration in our universities. Results: The study revealed that ethics and corporate culture had become compromised due to decades of abstruse practices, and that there was the need to urgently revamp work ethics, re-align values and re-orient practice in order to catch up with the meteoric speed of the global space. The nuances and intricacies involved in creating and maintaining standards, and the necessity of recreating a virile work culture is incontestable, not forgetting that our colonial antecedent also provided a skewed ‘law and order’ background for the practice. Unique contribution to theory, policy and practice: It was recommended that negatives like excessive bureaucracy should be jettisoned, and open-door policies should displace shoehorned policies of government. Our universities should be nurtured and encouraged to self-regulate, while modern management technique should be entrenched in the system. In order to be able to effectively deliver on their triadic mandates of teaching, research and community services, the workforce in the universities should be adequately motivated and a strong reward system should be put in place to galvanize excellence. The National Policy of Education should be constantly reviewed in tandem with new-age realities, while aggressive digitization should be introduced to simplify operations and maximize service-delivery.