By Prof. Abdelghaffar Amoka
I was invited in August 2026 to conduct an external examination for three postgraduate students (1 PhD and 2 MSc) at a federal institution about 87 kilometres from my university. The three theses were sent days before the scheduled examination for me to read page by page extensively, contribute to improving the work, prepare questions, and then schedule a date to travel to examine the students. The examination took place on the last day of August 2026.
I did not drive there.
I had an instinct that whatever mileage they would pay would not be enough to cover the fuel for my car. I wasn’t prepared to spend my own money to finance an examination for which I had already done several days of intellectual work. You don’t want to know the honorarium for the several days of intellectual work.
So I took a commercial bike to the park, boarded public transport, and travelled to the location of the institution. To make the journey comfortable, I paid for two seats. The two seats cost ₦5,000. Then, I took another commercial bike to the postgraduate school of the institution. The total cost from my institution to the institution was ₦7,000.
The examination lasted for 6 hours without a break because the exam had to be concluded that day. At the end of the day, they brought a claim for me to sign, and the mileage was ₦40 per kilometre. They quoted the distance to be 74 kilometres. That meant I was entitled to ₦2,960 for travelling to an institution approximately 87 kilometres away. That’s the worth we placed on ourselves. I laughed very hard, not because it was funny but because it was absurd and ridiculous.
Then, I asked them: So academics sat down and agreed that the cost of travelling one kilometre for a professor conducting a postgraduate external examination is ₦40? That was the moment I decided that this would be my first and last time honouring a postgraduate examination invitation from that institution.
I was lamenting this experience, and what I see as the self-normalisation of poverty in our universities, to a colleague. His response shocked me. He told me that, as a postgraduate coordinator, he does receive phone calls from senior colleagues asking to be considered for external examinations. They were not invited. They were calling to ask for the opportunity at a ₦20 per kilometre mileage rate. That is when I began to think more deeply about self-normalisation of poverty.
Self-normalisation of poverty is the process by which people gradually begin to accept poverty, deprivation, and poor living conditions as normal, inevitable, or even acceptable. Poverty initially produces frustration. Prolonged poverty produces adaptation. Prolonged adaptation produces acceptance. And acceptance has eventually produced defence of the very conditions that created the poverty.
The danger is not merely that lecturers become poor. The greater danger is that poverty becomes normalised by the very people who should be challenging the conditions that produced it.
Meanwhile, there was an interesting response to my last piece on the celebration of crumbs by some academics. A professor said that despite having four kids in the university, he is proudly saving ₦500,000 per month, thanks to this government. I must applaud the professor for being able to sustain his family and all his needs with an amount equivalent to the 2025 salary that ASUU thought was not enough for him. He was able to save from his pre-CATA salary, add it to the new CATA and professorial allowance, and save ₦500k every month. Seriously, saving ₦500,000 every month in Nigeria today is not a small achievement.
Within 2 years and with consistency, the professor will be able to save about ₦12 million, ignoring interest and unforeseen circumstances. But the reality is that the current value of that 10 million is about the same as the value of ₦700,000 that an Assistant Lecturer saved within 2 years from 2005 to 2007. A 15-year-old car in the market that cost between ₦700 to ₦1m in 2007 costs about ₦10m now.
So what exactly are we celebrating?
The fact that a professor said he can now save ₦500,000 every month?
Or the fact that it takes a professor two years of disciplined saving to accumulate money whose purchasing power may resemble what a much more junior academic could accumulate much earlier?
For a lecturer celebrating a professor achieving in 2026, what an Assistant Lecturer could achieve in 2007 is a testament to the self-normalisation of poverty.
Let’s remember where we are coming from.
When I was employed in 2005, the net salary of an Assistant Lecturer was about ₦37,000. At the exchange rate of the time, that was roughly $280. In 2006, it rose to about ₦57,000, approximately $445. By 2009, during the Yar’adua administration, the net salary of AL increased to around ₦110,000, approximately $738.
By 2022, ₦110,000 was worth only about $246 at the prevailing exchange rate. After subsidy removal in 2023 and naira devaluation, ₦110,000 dropped to as low as $73. And by 2026, an Assistant Lecturer’s salary was increased to roughly ₦250,000. That is equivalent to about $180. That is what we are celebrating.
What happened to Nigerian professors?
In March 2012, I purchased a London-Abuja British Airways round-trip ticket for £552.09 (₦138,574.59). The salary of a professor at the bar in 2012 was about ₦460,000 (£1,832.7). That means that by May 2015, a professor at the bar could afford a one-week holiday in London with his one-month salary. The ticket cost less than one third of the salary, and the remainder would comfortably cover the living expenses.
From comfort to survival.
Since 2015, after Buhari came to power, the comfort that Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan gave to university lecturers was taken away. Buhari’s 2022 strangulation of Academics is still very fresh. Then, Tinubu crushed the comfort in May 2023, and the worth of ₦416,000 became 277 USD for a professor at the bar after the withdrawal of fuel subsidies and devaluation of the naira. After 2025 ASUU-FG negotiations that lasted for months, professors’ take-home pay was eventually raised to about ₦1m, which is equivalent to 750 USD. But the value of the 2026 raise is still less than where Buhari left it; that was ₦416,000, which was equivalent to 930 USD for a professor at the bar.
The Stalin Chicken.
This is where the Joseph Stalin-Chicken metaphor becomes powerful. A chicken is being plucked. It is in pain. It is losing its feathers. It has nowhere to go. Then the same hand that has been plucking its feathers throws a few grains of food in front of it. The chicken follows the hand.
Not because the hand has stopped hurting it. But because survival has become more important than resistance.
That is what poverty can do to human beings. It can make people grateful for crumbs from the very system whose structure has impoverished them. And I fear that some academics have become so desperate for survival that they follow the very hand that has caused their suffering, simply because that hand is now offering them crumbs.
The application of the Stalin Chicken model, especially on academics, is a brilliant one from this government.
I will excuse those relatively young academics who do not know where we are coming from. They cannot compare what they have with what existed before they entered the system.
Of course, we are grateful to God for our current situations. We should also be grateful for the improvements that have occurred. But gratitude should not kill critical thinking. Real academics are not supposed to become professional worshippers of crumbs. We should interrogate systems. We should ask questions. We should challenge policies. We should understand the difference between survival and progress.
However, after the well-reported political endorsement by 600 northern academics in Kaduna a few weeks ago, there is another mobilisation of more senior academics, especially professors, for more endorsement. It is your choice to be a professional worshipper of crumbs. But don’t go there with the self-normalised poverty in academia. Ensure that you negotiate for an endorsement package that can at least change your car. Don’t go for crumbs if you can’t uphold the sanctity of a true academic. Best wishes!