Plagiarism, Kidnapping Should Share Similar Penalty, Says Don

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

Worried by the high rate of plagiarism in the country’s education system especially in tertiary institutions, the Secretary-General of the Committee of Provosts of Colleges of Education, Prof. Mojisola Oyarikua, has called for equal sanction for kidnappers and those found guilty of plagiarism.

Oyarikua made the call in Abuja at the Tertiary Institutions Central Academic Repository (TICAR) sensitisation workshop for provosts, chairmen committee of dean’s and ICT directors of NCE-awarding institutions, in collaboration with the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) and Sixgold Technologies Ltd.
She said plagiarism, which is copying the scholarly work ‎of another person without proper acknowledgement means ‘kidnap’ in Latin hence the need for offenders to be punished in like manner with kidnappers.

While regretting that laziness is the root cause of plagiarism, she said people should be proud to be in the academics and should be able to do things that will attract good names ‎to them.
“Plagiarism should attract imprisonment if possible. It is equivalent to kidnapping. Sanctions against kidnappers should also be applied to those involved in plagiarism. People should be proud to be in academics. These days, people are just lazy and just want to copy other people’s work.‎”
Similarly, the Director of Management Information System in the Aminu Kano College of Islamic and Legal Studies, Mallam Hamisu Abba, said the case of plagiarism has reached a stage that every Nigerian should be worried about. He said if left to continue, it will not augur well for the future of the nation.

“Most of the students just copy the work wholesale and when as a teacher you look at the work, you will see that it is the work of someone and not that of your student. You might also notice that the competence of the student is not up to what has been given but then, the work has been submitted to you and that is very serious.

“The laws are there but enforcing them is the challenge. The system has not been stable. It has been tampered with and it has come to the extent whereby even policies change daily. Also, the number of students is overwhelming for the teachers and level of infrastructural development is not commensurate with the number of students. Unless the issues are solved, the problems will remain,” he stressed.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of Sixgold Technologies, Dr. Kingsley Aguoru revealed that TICAR has an integrated plagiarism checker and the team would visit various institutions to find the respective challenges and customise the device to fulfil the needs of every institution.
“We are starting with the CoE; TICAR is a centralised system for academic work and it enables institutions to collate and disseminate academic laws and it has integrated plagiarism checker built for Nigeria. We are working with NCCE and TETFund.”