He wakes everyday to the same routine. No changes, not even by a bit. Between 6 - 7am, he is up from bed to either a quiet or noisy morning and by 8am, he is seated in the tiny lecture room built for about a 80 student but occupied by almost 153 students. Two hourly lectures frequent the timetable than the hourly, with the lectures coming in a more boring and depressed form with about 90% of the lecturers mixing up explanations and reading out the notes to the students while 95% of their lectures come in the form of presentations from the students. At around 5 - 6pm, the lecture comes to an end.
Then he heads home to the more interesting part of school:HOME. He needs an 8 hour sleep like every normal person, food, and time for recreation for optimal functioning but between 6pm and 7am the following day, there is just 13 hours. Assuming he sleeps for 6 hours, makes and/or takes his meal under an hour, and intends to read,is the remaining 6 hours enough to cover what he learnt earlier under 10 hours? No, it doesn't.
Then why the long lecture periods and a short study time? Why the expectations of better results? Why wouldn't students be depressed? Why wouldn't there be suicides amongst students? Why wouldn't students be bailing lectures just to attend to their other basic needs? Why wouldn't there be malpractices of all sort before, during and after examinations? Even when there are programmes like faculty or departmental weeks, more students rarely attend because their minds are still on academic workload and trying to balance their already worsening standard of living, academic and their private lives.
I believe a more spacious and comfortable lecture room, a different approach by lecturers to giving lectures, a balanced lecture timetable with students out-of-class schedules, better accommodation and more extracurricular activities with lecturers involved will improve the academic system in Nigeria.
But like I said, "Its just a story" and who would pay attention to this after reading?