Rot in varsity system as Buhari looks in

President Muhammadu Buhari last Friday “sacked” 13 public university Vice Chancellors, an indication that the government is ready to address the rot in the Nigerian University system.

The Nigerian university system has continued to decay over the years, causing parents to spend a whopping $500 million annually, educating their children abroad.

Industry watchers say administrative and financial inefficiencies, as well as obsolete curricula and outdated teachers and strikes plague the Nigerian university system.

On curriculum, analysts say the fundamental problem with the public university system is the content of instruction, which was developed since 1900AD. Nigeria received a post-industrial curriculum for a pre-industrial society. Public universities need to move from knowledge acquisition to competency building.

“Public university curricula were largely designed to train people to occupy positions in government ministries. Today, the needs of the country have outstripped this” suggested Ike Mowete, a professor at the University of Lagos.

The public university system is still a huge spender of government funds.

Between 1999 and 2009, total receipts from Federal Government budgetary allocation for Federal Universities was over N651 billion, while routine interventions from the Education Trust Fund (ETF) for these Federal Universities during the period under review, was over N103 billion.

There are four sources of funds to public universities: the Education Trust Fund (ETF), funds from the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) and International Development Agencies (IDAs). One more, but underreported source of fund to public universities is Internally Generated Revenues (IGRs).

The laws establishing Federal Universities require that periodically, a visitation panel, comprising knowledgeable individuals should assess the quality of management provided by the governing council, vice chancellor and principal officers. 

Investigations show that these visitations are irregular, and that undue delay by government in acting on the reports of these visitation panels and the poor compliance to recommendations of the panels, render the whole process ineffective.   

Ibidapo Obe, distinguished professor and Vice Chancellor Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, Ikwu, outlined some of the problems facing the public university system: “first is the issue of infrastructure and where students can practice the theories. Unfortunately the industrial backbone has been very weak and the entire economy has been run as one big consumer market dominated by imports from all over the world.

“Hence, there are no outlets to practice these theories. Secondly, the institutions themselves need to be upgraded, both for the humanware, as well as the soft and hardware to enable the students, study in a 21st Century environment.

We have started to have “in-breeding” in our University System. This is anti-innovation and progress. The quality of lecturers in our institutions needs an urgent audit.”

Similarly, Peter Okebukola, chairman, Crawford University governing council and former executive secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), told BusinessDay “this cannot be otherwise, in the face of poor resourcing of our universities. When equipment is in short supply relative to student enrolment for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, the teacher has little or no choice, than to skip practicals.”

“What kind of practical can you do with a kerosene stove instead of Bunsen burner, as revealed by the 2012 needs assessment survey? What kind of practicals requiring electricity and water can you run, when power and water supply to the university is a mere trickle, and the labs are not served? What about some of the teachers themselves, who have limited skills in practicals and hence are limited in the kind of practical sessions they can expose their students to?”

Tope Toogun, founder and CEO of Accelerated Learning Systems, lamented, “our graduates are unable to secure jobs because the education they acquired has not equipped them with the skills needed in the labour market. As entrepreneurial as we are in Nigeria, the inability of our graduates to successfully start and build viable businesses may actually be an indicator that they have been ‘mistrained’ by our education system, seeing that we have a good number of successful entrepreneurs who did not go to school.”

Togun added “hopefully, I would like to believe that the regulators at the NUC and NBTE are aware of these deficiencies, but I do not understand why we have not started taking coherent steps to address the issue that sits at the core of our youth unemployment challenge.”

“Why does the NUC continue to carry on enforcing and “quality assuring” processes that have been proven time and time over to be antiquated and ineffective? Why are university administrators seemingly turning a blind eye to the fact that they are selling the nation a dummy, by producing graduates who are not fit for purpose, thereby compounding an already difficult problem?”

STEPHEN ONYEKWELU