Why I refused to write a PhD thesis for senior public officer

When reports that part of the doctoral thesis by Dr Abiy Ahmed, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, was plagiarised surfaced online last week, my jaw dropped.

It is not as if that is the first high-level plagiarism case to hit the media, or that I have heard about. In fact, in 2017, research published by Cambridge University Press revealed a host of political leaders whose academic credentials failed the plagiarism test – German Minister of Defence Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Hungarian President Pàl Schmitt, and Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta to mention but a few.

So why did my jaw drop? One is because plagiarism often starts off looking like a joke until you become a prime minister with a plagiarism tag hovering over your sparkling achievements. I know you are probably reading this and thinking “I am clean, I do not plagiarise.”

I am inclined to believe you… but let me ask you something: “Have you ever used a quote, or more directly, a caption on The Gram, copied from somewhere without due attribution?”

I know, there is pressure to sound intelligent and like ‘you are with it’. The bad news is that it is not easy to reset once you get into the habit of not thinking and stealing ideas instead. For your information, plagiarism is punishable by law.

My first experience of plagiarism was in my second-year class. The assignment was to read a book of our choice, from the selected course texts, and write an analytical paper.

I enjoy reading and thinking creatively about things. And because of that, it never occurred to me that I could lift material from other people and pretend they were mine. One because, if I read them in a book or online, it meant my lecturer had read the work too. So apart from referencing in my paper, I could not copy. But some of my classmates thought they were cleverer than the lecturer.

Also read: Why plagiarism is a sin which cannot be washed away

If someone has been teaching you for an entire semester, surely they know the kind of grammatical blunders you make.

If you suddenly submit a paper sounding like the pre-eminent critic of the African Novel, the great Prof Eustace Palmer from Sierra Leone, you need no soothsayer to tell you that you will be caught.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is the story of how several of my classmates ended up with retakes in that course. This put the fear of God in me where plagiarism is concerned.

And as I learned later while in grad school, plagiarism can get you rusticated. But that is not to say there have been no temptations. Not too long ago, I got a ‘gig’ to write someone’s PhD thesis at a fee. Apparently, this lady, a senior government official, had heard about how good and focused I am when it comes to matters of academia.

Honestly, I couldn’t immediately say if this was right or wrong. My ambitious side was like “this is a good training ground for my own PhD.” I convinced myself for a few days and even thought about the luxurious décor I would buy for my living room with the money.

On the day I was to give her my feedback and quotation, I asked myself: “Would Jesus write that dissertation for her?” And my answer was “No”. But I still wasn’t convinced.

I am a logical and analytical person, so sometimes even when speaking to God I have this deep need for something solid to hold on to, not just impressions in my heart.

So, I called Dr Jennifer Muchiri. She is one of my academic mentors and an associate dean at the University of Nairobi. I explained the situation to her. In no uncertain terms, she told me not to try that.

“Daisy, those are the people who give academia a bad name. They get papers yet cannot think through one complex idea. But because they are deemed qualified, they end up in positions that run down this country. Writing that dissertation for her makes you an accomplice to the destruction of your country.”

So, no, I did not take the ‘gig’. And I am glad that one day when I get to the apex of my career, I will not have to worry about having participated in academic fraud.

The writer is the impact editor at NMG ([email protected]).