Mentor the Mentee for Academic Excellence: The Forgetting Value in Nigerian Universities

Study explored the value of mentorship in Nigerian Universities. Mentorship is an academic norm that sustain value of academic excellence in the University system. Academic mentorship refers to the training, knowledge, skills, orientation, attitude, discipline, and ethic standard acquired by protege from senior academic toward achieving the core value of teaching, research and community service in the university. Academic mentor is senior academic who has obligation to share expertise knowledge of teaching, research and community service experience with junior academics for the purpose of guiding protege on career path, setting goals, developing contact and offer personal support toward attainment of academic excellence. So, he who call for academic mentorship, call for academic excellence. University is a collegial system for building Centre of academic excellence. Meanwhile, a number of factors have been observed as clogs on the wheels of academic progress in the university system which hindered mentorship on teaching and researches for the attainment of academic excellence in Nigeria. Incidentally, some university academic staff suffered with mentorship practices where preferred mentors sometimes decline protégés' requests for mentorships. Today, mentorship programme in Nigerian universities is declining and seems to collapsed the value of academic system because some of the newly employed academic staffwere unconsciously idle to perform their obligation. They avoid classroom teaching, jettisoned academic research and publication, avoiding local and international conferences due to lack of sponsorship, engaged in sexual harassment and examination malpractice in the university. The study concluded that mentorship is an academic value established for attainment of academic excellence and integrity. Therefore, it is recommended among others that university management should implement mentorship policy and programme through seminars, workshops and conferences for training the junior academic towards achieving the academic excellence in teaching, research and community service.