MY ORDEAL WITH THE NON- ACADEMIC STAFF IN NNAMDI AZIKIWE UNIVERSITY
Nnamdi Azikiwe University Is a federal University located at awka, Anambra state capital fondly called “unizik” by her students. With her massive faculties scattered around it, sure is a great sight to behold and the serene environment makes learning a lot easier, though every typical student who studies there will know it as “uni-stress”.
After any program be it Regular, continuing education program(CEP), or Diploma ,comes being cleared from school or clearance, I don’t know for other schools but it takes quite a while for a student in NAU to complete this particular phase, and the people solely responsible for this are the non- academic staff of the prestigious University.
They are lazy, rude, annoying and above all they feel you owe them a duty by coming to them for your clearance.
I started my clearance from the faculty of Management Sciences where I was expected to show an evidence of faculty payments before being given the clearance form. The lady I met there was flipping through her phone and kept me standing for some minutes after I have mentioned my mission to her office. Out of curiosity, I peeped to check what she was engulfed in , only to see her pictures…. Yes, she was scrolling through her pictures and kept me standing for 15 minutes !! At the process of calling back her attention she poured water on my neatly arranged receipt that is on her table..
Oh sorry, was her next statement . Do I have a choice, I accepted her apology and headed straight to my department for my HOD’s signature. I submitted my clearance form with the secretary as the process demands, to be collected the next day. Out of my benevolence ,I gave them few days to avoid disappointment.
My next visit to my department made me feel like skinning the secretary alive, guess what? She misplaced my clearance form after days of leaving it with her, my form never got to the desk of the HOD. I was mad, “your form is not with us or it has been misplaced, you have to go back to the faculty and get another form, she blurted out. Ok ma, I replied amidst anger.
It was a terrible experience that the response I got from all these offices were almost the same. It is either they are chatting, neglecting their duties or they went for their break at unusual hour. Most of them are nursing mothers who put their entire attention to their babies. It is a wakeup call for the management of NAU to access the non- academic staffers and how they dispatch their duties. I was made to understand that most of them were either hired through political patronage or releated to management Staff of the University.
Finally,it is so painful that students are treated like animals.
WRITTEN BY: QUEEN MADU.