PROFESSOR Na’Allah, former VC, Kwara State University and University of Abuja continues his support for more universities:“…We need to rethink our university education in Nigeria and it is very urgent because part of the crisis we have today in terms of being one economy nation is that our universities are not responding adequately to our realities. We should move towards a university system that is functional and performing its expected roles”.
Prof. Kimse Okoko, former Chairman, Committee of Pro-Chancellors too once lent his cautious voice to those in support of more universities: and so to him: “If you go by the number of candidates, who are unable to get placement in existing universities, you will superficially say we need more universities.
There is no doubt that with more universities, such candidates will get placement. The good thing is that the private universities have been able to reduce the gap. But in the private universities, we are aware that the owners can sack any member of staff at any time unlike the situation in the state and federal universities.
But, it is not necessary to establish more universities to the detriment of existing ones.You are aware that the existing state and federal universities are not being well funded. So, calling for more universities to be established when the existing ones are yearning for better funding is not appropriate. Let the issue of funding for the existing universities be addressed. If we have that addressed, standards in tertiary institutions in the country will also improve.
However, like I said earlier, there are many candidates who are unable to get placement due to the inadequate number of universities. If this should be a consideration for the establishment of more universities, then I have no problem with that. But while this is being done, the proper funding of state and federal universities must also be considered”.
Why all tertiary educational institutions should be qualitative
Here is why our leaders should intentionally and unapologetically prioritise education quality. As our leaders put on their thinking caps on what to do with our apparent underdevelopment, they should remember first that it is education quality at all levels that can deliver sustainable development goals including war on multidimensional poverty and civic incompetence we notice all over the place.
Our civic incompetence is the only reason our leaders become dealers and we hail them for misusing our public funds with all their strength. Our leaders need to beam our discussion points now on the need to focus on better universities instead of establishing more that will not produce employable graduates in the public and private sectors. Seriously speaking, I believe that better universities can produce excellent models and modules that can address our rickety development agenda.
As I was saying, this is not just a seminal paper on the critical role of quality of education in development. But we have been following a simple trend that is showing that there is some nexus between the quality of universities and development of very well known countries. I mean that we have seen that the countries that have had the best universities and research orientation and funding are simply the best economies in the world.
The country that has just produced a hi-tech entrepreneur who has just been recorded as the first investor with a net worth of $500 billion USD, happens to be the country that parades some of the best universities in the world. The country, the United States isn’t the most populous with a population of about 350 million. But it has the highest number of universities and highest number of billionaires, and the highest number of hi-tech giants and digital disrupters such as Google, X, Apple, Meta/Facebook, etc. They are all based in the Unites States.
The other day, their president, Donald Trump addressed the United Nations and told the world, among others, that the United States could boast of the best and most sophisticated military hardware, part of which they just used to hit the Iranian nuclear sites. He said no other country in the world had the capacity to do what the United States did.
The sophistication and exceptionalism the United States parades is a product of the quality of their research in their universities they fund so robustly including the Johns Hopkins University Teaching Hospital, a private university in Maryland, they have designated, their Centre of Medical Excellence. There is a Congressional Act for its funding as America’s Centre of Medical Excellence, although it is privately owned.
We are talking about the United States, China, Japan, Germany, South Korea, France, India, United Kingdom, Russia, Canada, Brazil, Italy, etc. Within the context of global rating, in Africa, we have South Africa, Botswana, Mauritius, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, etc that can boast of better universities now than Nigeria. This is a tragedy for the giant of Africa that used to have one of the best four University Teaching Hospitals in the Commonwealth countries, including United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, etc. University College Hospital, Ibadan used to enjoy that status. Not anymore.
It is instructive to note from some peer-reviewed academic research papers that many universities especially in southern and eastern African countries are making progress when academic excellence comes into focus. A research report entitled, “Universities & Economic Development in Africa” by Nico Cloete, Tracy Bailey, Pundy Pillay, Ian Bunting and Peter Maassen in 2011 illustrates this point: The report shows that universities in South Africa, Botswana, Mauritius, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, are more advanced in research orientation.
So, that is why we need to turn to our local leaders in Nigeria to deepen their understanding of the essence of what we mean when we say they should understand that education and indeed quality education should be too important to play politics with.
There is, therefore, no question about the fact that the time has come for our leaders to lay aside all weight and worries about insecurity that has produced so many crisis merchants and deal with the problems of the Nigerian University system. All I have been saying in the discussion points here has been that what Professor Wole Soyinka has been harping on, what he saw about three decades ago is now very loud and clear: The entire university system in Nigeria needs a radical overhaul.
Products of the current structure cannot be relied upon anymore to sustain development of this complex country that requires urgent attention. I am fully persuaded that all the academic and non-academic union members in the university should be angrier about the decadence, poor funding, corruption, politicking and all the vices that are in the existing universities in the federation.
Policy environment needed to achieve desirable quality
We need a policy environment, which recognises that at the moment, learning is the only sustainable competitive advantage, individually and collectively. There is therefore no doubt that we need more and better universities that will enable organisations to become deliberate and effective in learning, unlearning and relearning, which are essential for progress. Nigerian university system with poor research funding and orientation has for some time now been producing the illiterate of the 21st century. According to Alvin Tofler, the illiterate of the 21st century will not ne those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”.
It is the same Alvin Tofler who notes that, “a library is a hospital for the mind”. How many of the Nigerian universities have good libraries? How many are linked to virtual libraries of working universities in developed economies? Are the Nigerian universities producing graduates that can continue to learn, unlearn and relearn for the industrial need and the public service?
Finally, it appears to some of us outside the system that Nigeria’s academic community does not like audit queries, reforms and accountability. The Oronsaye Panel report on the universities, which recommends that unwieldy bureaucracies that consume a larger chunk of their funds through complex and too much recurrent expenditure and unwholesome capital votes for academic work clearly shows resistance to change. The governance system in the current arrangement is not conducive for academic excellence. There are too many challenges of infrastructure in a new world driven by technologies. Yes, we now research and learn in a brand new world, according to a management expert, Betty Stanley Beene, President and CEO of United Way of America, where we confront a future in which the change is ever more rapid and unpredictable.
Let’s ponder over this: Any university system that will allow students to pursue a Master’s degree for five years and a PhD for ten years needs an urgent reform. Some of our universities have that imprimatur. It is a symptom of systemic decay in the Ivory Tower. The university is to prepare global citizens and oracles that can look into the seed of times and tell the people what tomorrow should be. It is education quality, quality research in many universities in all the regions of the federation that can deliver that – nothing else!
Therefore, Abuja and all the state capitals’ big men should not hold back the expediency of declaring declaration of emergency on education. Failure to deal with the tertiary educational institutions challenge will amount to covering up corruption at the highest level.
We should continue this conversation beyond this seminal paper until something happens to the university system. The Soyinka’s radical approach is not a bad idea, after all. Nigeria should have a lot of good universities that most Africans can come to as it was in the beginning. We need to look at how our distorted, convoluted federalism has impacted on quality of tertiary education in Nigeria. We need to look at how the few good public and private universities can be assisted to be globally competitive so that they can assist urgent efforts by organisations and even government agencies to reengineer or reinvent themselves to achieve more efficient and effective global orientations.
What do we need to do now? How can our universities be assisted to produce global citizens equipped for this high velocity world? How can there be restoration for the University College Hospital, (UCH) Ibadan, which used to part of the top four in the Commonwealth? There are experts who should contribute to this symposium so that “Nigerian exceptionalism” our leaders always promise will not be a mirage, after all.
We can’t excel nor can we make progress unless we get angry about the state of our schools, especially the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education where research drives sustainable development goals. Let’s debate this now! The debate continues on other contexts and constructs including how the regulatory authorities in education, notably the almighty National Universities Commission (NUC) too can be reformed to deal with our ancient curriculum in 21st century.
Can’t we debate why the regulators are too blind to see that in the developed economies, learning is fast getting out of the classrooms? How did an education agency regulator, for instance insist for so long that Law graduates from an open university cannot be admitted into Law School in 21st century when even most medical and engineering courses are now being offered online with the power of digital technologies?
To be continued…
- Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sunday. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday.