Release Them and Let Them Go

This is neither the usual biblical statement that Jesus Christ would utter to anyone who encountered salvation through Him to the glory of God the Father, nor is it the common African form of prayer in which people command Satan or spiritual forces to release individuals from the stronghold of spiritual captivity. This is a common paraphrase used within the confines of almost all tertiary institutions in Nigeria. It may be used by a concerned teacher-lecturer or non-academic staff member to address another teacher-lecturer or supervisor as an intervention, so that a learner or supervisee who has been pinned down by their supervisor may be released for graduation. The problem here lies in the fact that some lecturers or supervisors, out of bias or wickedness, refuse to release their students and supervisees for graduation. The paper therefore poses two questions: Should a lecturer or supervisor be begged to allow a learner or supervisee to graduate? Should bias exist between a lecturer-supervisor and a learner-supervisee, and if so, to what degree? It was in addressing these questions that the paper argued that bias constitutes one of the factors which impeded progress in innovative discovery and scholarship, as well as a damaging force that victimized students’ futures and imposed psychological, financial and economic burdens, raising the rate of suicide-related attempts among students in Nigerian tertiary institutions. The paper found that “bias” was a major factor undermining the ethical teacher-student relationship that ought to prevail within academia. It also proffered solutions to address the threats to these expected ethical values in the teacher-lecturer-student-learner relationship. The paper adopted a descriptive-survey method, in which sampling techniques and philosophical-conceptual analysis formed its central features.