The Life of an HOC in a Nigerian University

By Oke Suliat

As students we already have it hard enough but can we ease our HOC's burdens?

Being a student in a Nigerian university is an hassle and it can even become worse if you're nominated or chosen to be the Head of Class, HOC or an assistant.

The issue of bashing, insulting and accusing HOCs is now a widespread culture amongst University students. The HOCs and Assistants should be respected, It's hard to quantify or explain how hard they work to fulfill their duties, from coming to school early than others , to running all around campus to locate the lecturer that would come teach all of us in the lecture hall, to using their own airtime and mobile data to contact or send messages to students about a change in timetable or availability of a Lecturer.

All these are actually something they should be praised for, but rather than praising them or even offering to help them a little, we students consciously or unconsciously add more to their burden.

As students we all know how hard it is to commute to school early for a class, we should then consider how it'll be for them who are forced to come earlier than usual.

These humans invest their time, money and sweat for the betterment and growth of their coursemates, even sometimes their grades suffer a backlash from the activities they are saddled with.

An event happened in school one day, after lecture the lecturer had deliberately used half of the time allocated to him so as to allow the students take another lecture that was clashing with his, he asked the HOC to take attendance of the students so he can take his leave.

The HOC pleaded with the students to quietly sign their attendance and go for their next class but some of them still flouted the rule and went as far as yelling at him.

Another occasion was when an HOC asked the students to contribute funds to get stationeries that will benefit everyone, some students still made comments like ;'NA THEM GO USE AM CHOP ' that is implying that the HOC will embezzle the money. Some students will end up not paying and ruin the actual purpose of the contribution.

However no one is in a position to criticize others, but we're all human that knows how it feels to be annoyed, insulted and angered.

The HOCs are students and humans like everyone of us, if we can't help them we should at least try not to add to their burdens.