• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Emmanuel Nnadozie advocates definite financial approach to remedying tertiary education in Nigeria

Emmanuel Nnadozie advocates definite financial approach to remedying tertiary education in Nigeria

Emmanuel Nnadozie, the executive secretary of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) has advocated for an ideal financial approach to tackling the problem of inadequate funding for tertiary education in Nigeria.

Nnadozie, who was the guest lecturer at the annual bullion lecture a programme series of the Centre for Financial Journalism on Thursday, March 31 made the call while delivering a paper titled; “Funding Tertiary Education in Nigeria: Challenges and Opportunities” to curb the incidence of tertiary education system collapse in the country.

“The collapse of education is the collapse of a nation. Destroying any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs or the use of long-range missiles. It only requires lowering the quality of education and allowing cheating in the examination by the students.

“Patients die at the hands of such doctors. Building collapses at the hands of such engineers. Money is lost at the hands of such economists and accountants. Humanity dies at the hands of such religious scholars. Justice is lost at the hands of such judges,” Nnadozie said.

He disclosed that the Nigerian higher education sector has grown astronomically in size and has undergone a lot of transformation since its inception 90 years ago when Yaba Higher College was established in 1952.

However, he reiterated that it is unfortunate that its ability to act as an engine of growth and development is being challenged by the long-standing problem of inadequate funding.

Read also: CFM: Impacting education in Nigeria with ‘Seeds for the Future’ initiative

For these institutions to effectively perform their roles, according to Nnadozie, there must be adequate funding. The Nigerian government’s priority to education in general terms of funding has declined, and this has limited the ability of higher education institutions to effectively and efficiently perform their duties, particularly the traditional roles of teaching and research.

“Government funding is always insufficient, inadequate, unpredictable and unsustainable,” he stated.

And to overcome this, the university don advocated that universities and other tertiary institutions in Nigeria need to adopt a defined approach for internally generating revenue, which could come in the forms of grants, commercial ventures, alumni support, among others.

He stressed that human capacity building is needed to develop a country like Nigeria, hence, the need for developing the education sector, bearing in mind that no economy has ever been able to develop without developing human efforts and/or skills, and these human skills are sharpened through the education system.

Nnadozie gave an overview of the country’s tertiary education and the funding landscape.

“According to the National Policy on Education 2004, tertiary education in Nigeria is any education given to an individual after secondary education in formal institutions (universities, colleges of education, polytechnics, etc; including those running correspondence courses.

“Thus, there are three major categories of tertiary education in Nigeria. The first is the secondary, which is non-university level training in technical and vocational fields. The second is the higher technical but non-university level programmes offered at technical colleges, etc. while the third is the degree-awarding institutions.”

Nnadozie stated that African governments acknowledging the urgency of strengthening their higher education sector have started to increase the amount of public funding allocated to tertiary education.

However, he counselled various tertiary institutions’ managers to go beyond waiting for government allocations and embrace other sources of revenue generation that will help them be financially viable to meet their internal financial needs.

“Tertiary institutions can tap into the diaspora via the global knowledge community. They can also consider the Education trust fund options and many other sources to be financially independent. Tertiary institutions should have deans of advancement for university/ industry partnership,” he stated.

Besides, he called on the stakeholders and government to be willing to share the burden of funding education in Nigeria as according to him, the government must not be allowed to carry it alone.

He gave alternative models that nations have used in managing and funding their education sector. And recommended that Nigeria should adopt the model of government and private individuals’ shared responsibility. This model according to the renowned educationist is characterised by high tuition fees and well-developed student support systems. He cited countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, among others as using this model.