Federal Government’s allocation to the
education sector this year is N426.53bn. This is about 8.5 percent of
the total budget. But one shouldn’t be surprised at the turn of events.
When Nigeria is allocating less than nine percent of its budget to
education, its neighbour, Ghana has consistently allocated 31 per cent
of its entire budget to education.
I’m told Ghana at a time in its history
decided to focus on education and develop the sector. Now Nigerians are
rushing to a country that had in the past seen Nigeria as the
destination for quality education in Africa. A few years ago, one of
the universities in Ghana allegedly pegged admission quota for Nigerian
students at 700.
But rather than solve the challenges
confronting the education sector, and inject enough funds to run the
system, the Federal Government has continued to establish new
universities. Nigeria has 124 universities.
Imagine a father who cannot adequately
feed its 24 children going ahead to give birth to 20 extra children.
Isn’t this absurd? Yet this is what we are witnessing in Nigeria. When
there were less than 100 universities in the country, there was a
shortfall of 30,000 academic staff in Nigerian universities. Without
any consideration for adequate qualified lecturers, government has
continued to establish universities to score cheap political goals. This
is absurd.
Any serious minded person should know
that universities are powered by academics. There is no point in
establishing universities when there are no capable hands to do the
job of teaching. Besides, where in the world can you establish a
university with a mere N2bn? Owners of private universities pump in
more than that on their universities. I know that more than N6bn was
expended on Covenant University before its take-off, the same goes
for Elizade University. The owners of these universities are still
investing in them.
At the last count, the new nine
universities established by government in 2011 had less than 2,000
students. Some departments don’t even have registered students. So
in the true sense, how far have these new universities boost access to
universities? Yet government keeps parroting need for access as reason
for creating more universities. To start with, government is yet to
realise that university education is not for everybody and in fact you
don’t have to be a university graduate to be successful in life. We are
missing this point and that is why we are not developing our
polytechnics and colleges of education.
If government wants to run education as a
serious business, it should close down its new universities, fund and
expand the existing ones to increase access and encourage research and
development.
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