By Asuquo Cletus Felix
Research remains one of the key requirements for graduating students, infact without research, a student in any higher institution of learning in Nigeria cannot be said to have completed his course of study.
In Nigeria, academic researches continue to suffer a low level pedestal as these works end up in shelves in university and departmental libraries, or the personal archives of the researcher.
It would not be an overstatement to admit that the way and manner in which research and researchers are treated in this part of the world are amongst the reasons why the country lacks accurate statistics to determine her actual population size, growth as well as other fields of human services.
The implementation of educational research in many advanced countries help to facilitate better living standards, improved technological advancements, as well as boost their economy.
This is because research serve as a panacea for good administrative policies, workable informations, as well as a yardstick to address complex issues.
Being that the workload experienced by researchers to gather these data is neither appreciated nor validated, it drives some researchers to care less by (instead) providing false data, misleading informations, vague questionnaires adversely resulting to poor research outcome.
If all of us, continue to act indifferently, display unkind and unresponsive attitudes to researchers who approach us for responses, how can we and our children in good conscience, cite them while pursuing our academic works?.
Research should be encouraged at all levels, especially in our tertiary institutions. In countries all over the world, research is encouraged, but in Nigeria, research is not encouraged. Rather, research findings are dumped in the university libraries.
Government and individuals at every level should therefore tilt from devaluing to (instead) raising the banners of value toward research and researchers.
Before now, China, in less than a quarter century ago, was still lagging behind in many ways. But the robust support thrown behind their indigenous researchers, and the warm embrace of their research results by the Chinese government have now placed the country at par with other leading nations in all walks of life on earth and beyond.
As such, if a country as blessed as Nigeria (with smart and functioning brains) can have leaders that can see beyond the current state of dependency (though professing independency) and invest in her researchers and research institutions in the country, Nigeria will become a reference point in the nearest future.
