Lecturers are now selling tomatoes to make ends meet. And because it is from lecturers, I am thoroughly enjoying the long epistles written in flawless English language, both on the social media and the regular media.

About three years ago, my sister and I called for a Bolt taxi to drop us off at the market. The app located the closest driver and let me know that Dr Ali (not real name) would be with me in five minutes. On getting into the car, I joked about his name.

‘Dr Ali? Ah! I will report you to the NMA for impersonating doctors fa!’

He just smiled and asked what NMA stood for. When I told him, he replied that he was not that kind of doctor, but he did have a PhD.  He opened the glove compartment of his car to show me his university identity card and the scripts of undergraduate students he was grading. He worked in the Kano State University of Science and Technology (now renamed Aliko Dangote University of

Science and Technology).

My sister and I were humbled. Driving a Bolt taxi was his side hustle. He was one of the recipients of former Governor Kwankwaso’s masters scholarships to Malaysia. Upon return, they were given automatic employment at the state university. Later, he was able to secure another PhD scholarship in China, where he spent the last three years. Now, he was back to his job, to serve his country.
At the time, the job paid N240,000 per month. It was not enough for his basic needs, so he had to improvise with many side gigs – farming, importing cheap electronics from China, working as a translator for Chinese and Malaysians in Nigeria, as well as driving a Bolt cab.
As he was narrating his story, I could hear the weariness in his voice. The man was tired.

And he was only 33 years old. Why will he not develop high blood pressure?
In the widely acclaimed series – ‘Big Bang Theory’ about brilliant nerdy scientists, theoretical physicists – Sheldon and Leonard have to share an apartment even though they worked at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) because their salaries were not enough for them to each get their own place.

One of the reasons I rejected the idea of getting a PhD in the US was the idea of earning between $2,500 and $3500 as a research assistant. A decent accommodation alone would gulp up to $1,500 to $2,000 per month! How was I supposed to live on $500 to $1,000 per month? In Boston alone, the rent was almost $4,000 to $5,000 per month. Of course, people have to come together to share an apartment.

The fact is: The academia, whether in Nigeria or elsewhere, has never paid well. It is a profession you go into seeking personal fulfilment and satisfaction at the expense of financial freedom.

To understand this, we must dig into history. Formal education started in primary schools some 500 years ago and was populated by male teachers. Along the way, men were drafted into wars and women had learnt sufficiently enough to take over teaching. Just 60 years ago, almost all schoolteachers were women.

And the expectation was that they did it while waiting to find husbands, or were married women making a little extra money for the family. They were not paid to be the prime breadwinners in their families.

Teaching itself is not seen as a real profession by many; hence, it is said that “those that can, do, those that can’t, teach.” There is the feeling that since most of the people you teach are children, anyone can do it.

The problem is that there is a living generation who could make it without having an education. Most of them, to their credit, realise that the world is changing and the generation that is becoming will not be able to make cars, mine coals or do the jobs that could be done without education. Those jobs don’t exist, and it is not because of China or Canada, it is because of technology.

However, there are a few who don’t recognise that the world has changed, or they do and want to go back to the way things were.

What that means is that they must make education unimportant because in their world, education wasn’t important.
Unfortunately for us, Nigerians are one of those people who do not think that education is important. In fact, it is deemed a threat; and so, they will never allocate education the funds it deserves.
So, what can we, the academics do about it?

This is where I differ from other lecturers. Most lecturers (usually the older generations) want to do nothing but go on incessant strikes demanding for better pay. This method has failed woefully over the years and has only served to expose the level of poverty our teachers stooped to. Some sold their cars, women sold their jewellery, and others took lower paying jobs and even unskilled labour, yet the government did not care!

The younger generation of people in the academia have since gotten smarter, learning from their teachers’ mistakes. They have realised a fundamental truth – in this present century, one source of income is not enough, especially, not in Nigeria, where inflation rates are competing with mountain Everest to see who is higher.

Not this generation – the solution is to japa. Most universities outside the country are actively recruiting young post-docs with decent offers (especially Asia) just enough for them to live comfortable lives. Remember, we are not aiming for the cover of Forbes side hustles. Depending on your skill sets, most young people in the academia are engaged with many consultancy services, research and working (sometimes remotely) for non-governmental for added income. A lot of times, the side hustles are paying even more than the main hustle.

On entrepreneurship, many lecturers are now engaged in fulltime business – from farming to selling grains, cars to tutoring (online lectures) – for people interested. Then there are the smart ones who discovered information technology early enough and are using it for fintech, coding and buying digital products and making passive income.

The drawback of this type of ‘hustling’ is that we are not giving the university our undivided attention – we are cheating the system and using government’s time to drive Uber instead.

This is true but is also the new reality.
The term ‘side hustle’ was first used in the 1950s by a newspaper in America. It refers to the act of buying and selling goods, merely to earn some extra cash. At the time, it was something of a synonym to the word ‘scam.’ Nowadays, thanks to globalisation and the development of new technology, the phrase, “side hustle” has evolved into something truly special, which everyone has the potential to gain from. Students are working part time, setting up business centres in schools, selling jewellery, wigs and cloths. Others are doing laundry services and selling zobo from their dormitories. I remember the story of a student who came from incredible wealth in Nigeria, who was selling zobo to her white friends in Germany where she was sent to get education.

Agreed, not everyone can become an entrepreneur. For instance, I cannot sell anything to save my life, but we must embrace the new reality that our wages in the academia will forever never be enough.

We must find new skills to earn a decent income in this economy. Simply whining about the government and writing long editorials in newspapers is not enough. Nigerian lecturers have to wise up. This is our new reality.