Writing this piece, it is no longer
news that the Nigerian University
education system owing to a
certain number of factors has
surrendered its lead in Africa to
smaller countries like South Africa,
Ghana, Benin, Togo and Senegal
with our universities holding distant rankings
among the top universities in the world. For
example, no Nigerian university featured in the
first twenty-five universities in Africa, our
best shot was Obafemi Awolowo University, which
was placed in the 28 position behind universities
in countries like Mozambique, Burkina Faso and
Tanzania. It was thus not surprising that none of
our universities featured in the first 1,000
universities in the world.
What then happened to our Nigerian University
education? Why has the system declined? Who is
majorly to blame? And what can be done to arrest
such a drift and bring the university system back to
its place of glory.
To answer these questions requires some frank
thinking, talking and action and this I intend to do
here.
Government should take the blame for the failed
university education. A tour of many of our
universities would reveal a lack of the basic and
vital infrastructure needed to make a university
functional for learning and research as most of the
structures in place are old and dilapidated. In most
universities in Nigeria one could find that lecture
halls and laboratories were stretched, with
students standing to take notes. The story is the
same for the residential hostels, where the student
population outstrips the available bed-spaces.
Then there is the issue of poor remuneration for
our lecturers; this in turn affects the quality of work
and research capacity of such lecturers. The
lecturers in turn have demanded for better working
conditions and have resorted to the option of
strikes to press home such demands. These strikes
disrupt the academic sessions and ensure that a
student who is naturally supposed to spend a
maximum of four years may enjoy a 'tenure
elongation of two or three years. ' Government's
poor funding of education largely means that most
of our government universities (Federal and State
owned) engage more and more students without receiving the funds to properly do so, small wonder our computer science students go through their
four year study programme possibly without seeing
a computer and while the world now feats on new
software packages to create and deliver super
applications, the Nigerian student who has the
misfortune of studying computer science is fixated
on outdated languages like Cobol, Fortran and Q basic. In such a situation the inevitable isn't
farfetched as the quality of the Nigerian graduate is
largely eroded.
To halt the drift, government itself must resolve to
sort out the funding problems of our university
system by pumping more funds into the system and seeing to it that these funds are judiciously
utilized to enhancing the quality of our university education. Government has always protested that it cannot fund education in Nigeria and truly it
cannot, not while its officials continue to siphon our
commonwealth buying mansions in Abuja and abroad. It has thus suggested an increase in tuition
fees. This protest is even more ludicrous as countries poorer than us have continued to fund
university education. An increase in tuition fees
would be counterproductive as it will see a fall in
student enrollment ratios and may even push such students to other climes with the argument that it
would be better to pay more for a qualitative form
of education in Ghana, Benin or Senegal than pay
same for a distant type in Nigeria. Those calling for
an increase in tuition fees might cite the example of
Britain which in the few years past raised fees but
fail to note that while the British quality of
university education is quite high, its Nigerian
counterpart isn't. Even at that, it is on record that
tuition fees have been raised in several institutions,
have we felt the impact of such an increase? The
answer is a resounding no!
Government should see university education as a
right and not a privilege, education under the 1999
constitution is one of the justiciable rights
guaranteed under it. It cannot shirk its
responsibility and yet expect socio-economic and
development miracles to occur.
Instead of tuition increases, our policy makers as
well as university administrators should explore
other sources of funding from philanthropists,
businesses and multinationals. This could go a
long way to complementing the government's
haphazard efforts at funding the university system.
Such measures shall be explored in the subsequent
part of this piece, next week.
BY IGBOELI ARINZE
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