Sometimes in late 2025, during a conversation with a colleague teaching in a federal university in Southwest Nigeria, a troubling phrase surfaced “defense list.” It sounded innocuous at first, almost administrative. But beneath that seeming harmless bureaucratic veneer lies a deeply troubling practice that now demands interrogation.
Two issues arose in that discussion. The first was the creeping commodification of data, where analysts increasingly “assist” postgraduate students by effectively producing Chapters Three, Four, and Five. That is a matter for another day (one that requires careful empirical investigation on my part). The second, however, is more immediate, more visible, and perhaps more insidious in its normalization across both MSc and PhD programmes.
It is what I have come to describe as: *“Show your cooler before defense”* academic scandal.
Across some Nigerian universities, postgraduate candidates, whether at the MSc or PhD level, are now handed a MANDATORY “defense list.” This list does not contain scholarly requirements or intellectual benchmarks. Rather, it itemises consumables: wraps of pounded yam, varieties of rice (jollof or fried), assorted meats and crates of drinks. In some instances, the defense date is not even fixed until this culinary obligation is satisfied.
Let us be clear: when did academic rigor become contingent on catering logistics?
What was once an informal, voluntary gesture of appreciation has now hardened into a coercive condition. It is no longer hospitality; it is institutionalized expectation. And expectations, when tied to academic progression, easily mutate into quiet extortion.
The ethical implications are profound.
First, it raises the question of fairness and evaluative integrity. How do we convincingly separate academic judgment from social indebtedness when a candidate has obviously been tasked to provide ASSORTED food items to host the very panel tasked with assessing them? Even if no explicit bias occurs, the optics alone erode confidence in the credibility of the process. A system that permits such entanglement invites suspicion, and suspicion is corrosive to institutional legitimacy.
Second, it deepens the already harsh realities of postgraduate education in Nigeria. Unlike many global contexts, our MSc and PhD programmes are largely self-funded. Candidates navigate tuition, research costs, fieldwork logistics and in many cases, basic survival (often without institutional funding support). Many are unemployed or underemployed, pursuing advanced degrees as pathways to uncertain futures.
To now impose an additional, non-academic financial burden (under the guise of a “warped” tradition) is not only insensitive; it is structurally exploitative.
Third, and perhaps most troubling, is the normalisation of this practice. What begins as an exception quietly becomes a rule; what is questioned today becomes unquestionable tomorrow. This is how institutions drift, not through grand policy shifts, but through accumulated silences around small ethical compromises.
Some may argue that such practices foster collegiality, build community, or reflect cultural values of hospitality. But culture must not be weaponized against ethics. Hospitality loses its moral meaning when it is demanded. *A gift that is compelled ceases to be a gift.*
The university, at its core, is meant to be a space of intellectual discipline, ethical formation, and critical inquiry. It must resist the infiltration of practices that reduce scholarly rites to transactional exchanges. A defense, whether PGD, MSc, MPhil or PhD, is not a wedding reception. It is not a naming ceremony. It is a rigorous intellectual exercise meant to test the originality, depth and contribution of a candidate’s research.
Anything that compromises, or appears to compromise, that sanctity must be firmly rejected.
This is not a call for asceticism or the elimination of all forms of celebration. Departments may, if they so wish, create optional, collectively funded post-defense receptions that do not place the burden on candidates. Better still, institutions should begin to think seriously about structured funding for postgraduate studies, however modest.
But the current trajectory where a “defense list” becomes a prerequisite for academic evaluation is untenable and needs to be frankly addressed immediately.
If left unchecked, we risk producing not just graduates, but a generation socialized into the logic that success is negotiated not only through merit, but through material appeasement.
And that would be a far more dangerous thesis than any candidate could ever defend.
As the Yoruba might caution, àṣà tí a ko bá to lẹsẹsẹ, á máa bàjẹ́ ni ọwọ́ ẹni (a culture we fail to guide with care will decay in our hands)
This “cooler before defense” culture does not fit. It must be questioned, resisted and ultimately dismantled as soon as possible.
Mo wi t’emi o.
Ire o.
Adéyẹmí Johnson Ademọwọ
Is professor of social anthropology and African studies in the department of Sociology,
Afe Babalola University Ado-Ekiti
