‘Where is your cooler of food?’ – Weird demands at postgraduate defences

By Adesina Wahab 

There is an image, increasingly becoming familiar in our university system, that should give us pause: a postgraduate candidate arrives for a thesis defence with not only a bound dissertation, but also a cooler laden with food and drinks for the examiners. It is often dismissed as culture, described as optional, or waved aside as harmless tradition. Yet for many candidates, it is neither voluntary nor benign. It is expected – sometimes quietly, but unmistakably. And once expectation enters the room, something essential begins to erode.

A postgraduate defence is meant to be one of the most solemn and intellectually rigorous exercises in a university. It is the point at which a candidate’s work is subjected to scrutiny – where arguments are tested, methods interrogated, and conclusions challenged. It is, at its core, a test of merit. In that room, only one thing should matter: the quality of the candidate’s scholarship. Not hospitality. Not social codes. Not unwritten obligations.

And yet, across several Nigerian universities, a troubling pattern is taking root. Candidates are subtly, and sometimes explicitly, given lists of items to provide: food, drinks, refreshments. The practice is labelled optional, but refusal often attracts quiet disapproval or subtle pressure. Departmental staff may even coordinate or supervise these arrangements, embedding them within the institutional process. What begins as celebration gradually hardens into expectation; expectation into pressure; and pressure into coercion.

Graduads recount experiences 

Philip (other names withheld), recalled all the things he had to provide while defending his doctoral thesis at a university in the Southwestern part of the country. “We made arrangements for the external assessor to come over and surely money was paid for some things and I was given the mandate to provide refreshment and drinks. Apart from the supervisor, other workers in the department were also taken care of,” he stated.

Asked whether the provision of those items swayed the assessors to pass him, Philip said he was sure that he did a great job and that his thesis met the demands of the assessors.

Similarly, Uche, who did same at a university in the South-East, opined that the trend puts more financial pressure on postgraduate students.

“ We all know what the economic situation in the country is now. Some people who go for postgraduate studies do so because they don’t have jobs and they believe that bagging higher degrees could improve their possibility of securing some jobs. So, asking such people to now add the expenses of compulsory feeding of people is killing,” he stated.

Condemnation of practice on social media 

A professor of Social Anthropology and African Studies, Department of Sociology, Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, ABUAD, Adeyemi Ademowo, stirred the hornet’s nest recently with a post on social media titled: Show your cooler before defense: Ritual, coercion and the misnomer in Nigeria’s ivory towers.

He wrote: “Sometimes in late 2025, during a conversation with a colleague teaching in a federal university in South-West 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 rigour 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.”

We must guide against bastardizing processes – CONUA boss

Commenting on the development, the National President of the Congress of University Academics, CONUA, Dr Niyi Sunmonu, opined that processes musy be guided against bastardization.

“Let us be clear: culture is not the problem. In African societies, we celebrate achievements communally. We mark milestones, academic or otherwise, with food, fellowship, and joy. There is nothing inherently wrong with a candidate choosing to celebrate after a successful defence. But such celebration must remain voluntary, separate from the assessment process, and free of institutional involvement. Once it enters the examination space, it risks contaminating the very process it seeks to accompany.

“Across leading university systems, whether in Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, or much of Europe, the principles are consistent. Assessment and hospitality are strictly separated. Where refreshments are necessary, they are provided by the institution, not the candidate. Clear ethical guidelines prohibit any form of inducement, however small. External examiners are insulated from personal obligations to candidates. And any celebration takes place after the defence, outside official proceedings, entirely at the discretion of the candidate.These practices are not about austerity. They are about safeguarding integrity.

“Some may argue that food does not influence academic judgment. Perhaps it does not. But that is not the point. The issue is perception and precedent. If candidates are expected to provide refreshments, what message are we sending about merit? What pressure are we placing on those who cannot afford it? What prevents escalation into more troubling expectations? We cannot, in good conscience, criticise “stomach infrastructure” in public life while permitting its softer variants within academia.

“The persistence of this practice is sustained not only by those who promote it, but by those who tolerate it. We know when something is wrong. Yet it is often rationalised as tradition, dismissed as harmless,

or left unchallenged because “that is how it has always been.” And still, there are exceptions – individuals who have quietly refused to comply, insisting on being judged solely on their work. In those instances, the system did not collapse. That alone should tell us that the practice is not necessary, but entrenched.

“Reform does not require sweeping legislation. It requires clarity and courage. Universities must draw a firm line: no food, drinks, or entertainment within the defence process. Departments must not issue lists or coordinate hospitality. Clear guidelines must affirm that assessment is based solely on academic merit. Students must be empowered to understand that their success depends on their scholarship, not their provision. And those who wish to celebrate should do so freely, but outside the formal academic space.

“The credibility of our universities rests not only on what we teach, but on how we examine. If we allow informal expectations to creep into formal evaluations, we risk eroding that credibility – quietly, gradually, but decisively.

“We must return to a simple principle, one that should never have been in doubt: in a university, ideas must speak first. Everything else, no matter how culturally familiar, must remain outside the room.”

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