Social media in Nigeria went agog in the first half of February over a squabble which occurred between a student and a lecturer at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University premises in Awka, Anambra State. Video clips released via several social media handles showed commotion as Goddy-Mbakwe Chimamaka Precious, a 300-level student, in a physical struggle with Dr Chukwudi Okoye, a lecturer in the department of Theatre and Film Studies.
A video capturing the interaction that led to the event shows Precious filming herself in a public space and Okoye, who, as he walked past, used his hand to prod her on her back to give way. This prompted an irritated Miss Precious to let out the statement “can you imagine” to a friend behind the camera. The lecturer overheard this statement which he found insulting, as he informed in a video he later released.
According to him, he walked up to Precious and asked her to delete the footage. When she refused to do so, he confiscated her phone. In retaliation, she attacked him. In Precious’s statement, she said that the altercation caused her phone to fall and break. The school authorities expelled precious on 13 February 2025, merely a few days after the incident.
The public reaction to the incident was overwhelmingly negative towards Precious. Viral social media posts, blogs and even newspapers have either condemned her behaviour or written the story in ways that portray her as the primary aggressor who dared to disrespect authority, whilst they absolved the lecturer of any blame. What is even more baffling is the lack of support for her from young people like herself on social media. Young people, who more readily understand the huge power imbalance that exists between lecturers and students in Nigerian universities, did not show her empathy for standing up for herself.
But we can more easily understand the situation if we realize that conditioning has led us to see this outsized power imbalance between teachers and students and its abuse as normal. It is taken as given that lecturers can fail you over real or perceived personal slights, verbally and physically harass you, seize your phone and detain you, and you are not supposed to defend yourself as a student. Instead, you are expected to quietly take it, to graduate. Beyond that, the negative reaction also stems from the fact Precious — as a young woman — attacked a respectable older man. The cultural ethos to give deference to elders — especially rich ones — no matter what, has entrenched a form of ageism in which young people are not seen as individuals deserving of equal agency and respect.
This is even worse for children and teenagers who have been physically, emotionally and verbally abused by their parents, by their teachers in schools and other people around them regularly. We must note that respect is not the same thing as being overbearing or abusive. The whole idea of not sparing the rod so as not to spoil the child and the related autocratic way that lecturers and management run higher institutions in Nigeria has colonial roots.
There is also a misogynistic aspect of the negative reactions to the case of Precious. For some sections of “netizens”,, that she purportedly alleged that Mr Okoye — during the altercation — held her dress in a manner that threatened to expose her, was a cardinal sin. They have tied it to their imagined overwhelming incidences of false sexual assault and rape allegations. But we know there’s no evidence for anything of that scale and patriarchal online players simply contrived this.
Generally speaking, universities and other higher institutions in Nigeria do not advance and protect students’ rights against overreach and abuse of power by lecturers and other authorities. The student union bodies have lost their radicalism and the school authorities act swiftly to suspend union activities, punish and expel union leadership and members when they attempt to do basic union functions like resisting fee hikes. The extent of power that lecturers have over the students has grown to be tyrannical.
Students have no rights to determine or contribute to their teaching curriculum, pace and environment. There is hardly any means for students to seek redress against abusive or incompetent lecturers. Seeking redress outside the university is even harder because the students are usually in a more economically disadvantaged position than the lecturers and the lecturers may even enjoy the full support of the university authorities, as their first instinct is to protect the institution from embarrassment.
In attending Nigerian universities, we have all heard or witnessed stories of lecturers demanding sex for grades or failing students over other personal slights and the high level of impunity with which they do it. The situation is more bleak in the private universities as they are set up as indoctrination houses around the religious whims of their conservative founders. For most of these private universities, student rights and freedom of movement are severely restricted and regimented.
To conclude, one can reasonably deduce that Goddy-Mbakwe Chimamaka Precious was within her rights to defend herself and her property from the seizure of a stranger and she was sadly severely punished for it. More importantly, the take away must be that we must work towards dismantling the colonial systems of oppression that restrict students’ and young peoples’ rights to be treated with respect and dignity. We must dismantle the capitalist system that entrenches mental poverty in young people and enables these ideologies of oppression to thrive. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. Join a revolutionary organisation today.
by Emmanuel EDOMWONYI
