The way forward for Nigerian universities (1)

On Friday, June 3, 2016, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, had an interactive meeting with Pro-chancellors and Vice-chancellors of all federal universities in the country in order to deliberate on the way forward in addressing the pathetic state of our universities. To the best of my knowledge, this action by the minister is the first of its kind in Nigeria since my arrival from Cambridge in August 1981 to join the services of the University of Ibadan in the Department of Chemistry. I am tempted to believe that the Federal Government appears to be prepared to hold the bull by the horns in respect of the sad state of Nigerian universities in the last three decades. Currently, Nigeria has 236 universities, comprising 42 federal, 44 state-owned and 150 private-owned universities.
The action of the Minister of Education is a welcome development and I believe that addressing the problems confronting our universities now will stem the rot in the university system and place Nigerian institutions in their rightful positions in the world university ratings. My humble submissions to the eradication of the problems raised by the minister are detailed below and are the results of my deep experience in university matters at the Universities of Cardiff, Cambridge (UK), Witten-Herdecke (Germany) and the University of Ibadan over the last three and half decades.

1. University funding:

All over the world, government-owned universities are funded by the government who established them. The University of Ibadan was well-funded by the Federal Government from its establishment in 1948 up till the early seventies when the military came in to destroy tertiary education in the country. This destruction was unfortunately continued by the Federal Government that consistently allocated a mere eight per cent of her annual budget to the education sector when the minimum recommended by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation  is 26 per cent. Nigeria is by all standards, a rich nation, being the fifth oil producing country in the world and should be able to appropriate at least 30 per cent of her annual budget to the education sector for the sake of our youths who are the leaders of tomorrow. Ghana which is less endowed than Nigeria now appropriates over 30 per cent of her annual budget to the education sector and we know that some developed countries spend as much as 40 per cent of their annual budget on the education of their youths. The problem with Nigeria is lack of foresight by her leaders and their inability to recognise the grave consequences of failure to educate the youths of a nation like Nigeria where 90 per cent of the citizens are illiterates. This is why she still remains a dumping ground for finished goods whose raw materials are produced by Nigerians. Education can never be more expensive than ignorance.
The TETFund cited by the minister is not enough for the 42 federal universities in the country. With the current exchange rate of N350 to the dollar, the Needs Assessment grant of N200bn cited by the minister is just $571m. This amount of money is not enough to equip all the laboratories in our Department of Chemistry, UI, to world class standard. In most developed countries of the world, the government is assisted by industries and philanthropists. An example is the case of one Mr. Robinson, a British citizen who earned his living by repairing television sets. At his death in 1970, he gave all his life savings of £20m (with the current exchange rate of N450 to the pound, this amounts to N9bn) to the University of Cambridge in recognition of the invaluable contribution of a university to the development of a nation. It was therefore heart-warming that a college, Robinson College, was named after him in Cambridge. Some of the colleges established in Cambridge by benefactors and benefactresses include Pembroke College (founded in 1347 by the Countess of Pembroke), Gonville and Caius College (1348, by Edmond Gonville and the theologian, Dr Caius), Trinity Hall (1350, by Bishop Bateman), Kings College (1414, by Henry the VI), Sidney Sussex College (1596, by Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex) and Downing College (1807, by Sir George Downing) to name but a few.
Here in Nigeria, the rich would rather prefer to own their own universities, which is very unfortunate for a developing nation like us.

2. Quality and regulation

The quality of any graduate must reflect the quality of their teachers, the state-of-the-art facilities available for teaching and research and consequently, the financial status of the university. A university that is well-funded will certainly attract highly qualified teachers who will not only enjoy doing their jobs in the lecture halls but also enjoy doing solid research work in a well-equipped laboratory for rapid development of the nation. The issue of regulating the quality of teaching is strictly for under-developed countries whose governments cannot fund the universities they have established. The quality of academic output is religiously controlled by the Senate of the university and not by laws or decrees from elsewhere. The Senate of a well-funded university has the intellectual capacity to do her job excellently without outside interference.
The so-called accreditation of university programmes is a mere façade and should be discontinued forthwith. Eighty per cent of universities given full accreditation for various programmes do not have qualified teachers and the appropriate facilities for such programmes particularly in the science-based courses. Apart from entertaining the accreditation team very well to ensure high scores, a lot of lies are fed to the team. In one particular instance, all the lights in the so-called laboratories were deliberately switched off and all obsolete equipment were well-cleaned up and assembled for accreditation with the electricity distribution company taking the blame for the blackout. The science programme in this state university scored 85 per cent!! The question I asked myself was “Why did the accreditation team not request a generator to check one or two of the equipment”?
The recent scrapping of Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination tests in universities by the Minister of Education is very unfortunate as this will only encourage the intake of misfits and indolent students who did not sit for the UTME by themselves. This does not however prevent a university from conducting an oral examination at no cost to the candidate in order to select the right students for admission.

3. Infrastructure and learning resources:

Again, a university that is well-funded must have all the infrastructure needed in place as well as the appropriate facilities for learning and research. The major problems in our universities are the issues of bottlenecks and bureaucratic hurdles that must be dealt with in order to get reasonable amount of money from the government. As the Dean of Science, University of Ibadan, between 2007 and 2009, I was very excited when the Federal Government approved an extended list of research facilities from my office under the Needs Assessment and TETFund. As of June 23, 2016, over 90 per cent of the approved research facilities had yet to be delivered!