Nigerian Universities

Nigerian Universities: Trees Without Fruits?

Abdullah Musa

On two separate occasions in the past, I had cause to write on two different issues which however have relevance to our discourse today. The spur of today’s write up however came from the editorial of Daily Trust newspaper of March 19, 2009, where they called for salvaging of Nigerian Universities.

It might not be too far off the mark to say that from independence to date hundreds of thousands of Nigerian youths went to many of the existing universities and passed out successfully. Many today are called engineers, many medical, and vet doctors. Others are architects, while those who learnt how to ‘fix things’ apparently got their training from outside the university walls. Many would like to be called accountants, some certified by ICAN and others at much later date by ANAN. With or without the aid of their skill however, many public servants have said goodbye to poverty through one dubious way or another.

Many are also graduates in agriculture, and yet one does not know where they decided to take their learned skills to, for today many state governments have to rely on foreigners to show them how to get more out of our ‘frustrated’ soil. Many read pharmacy or is it pharmaceutical science, but the reality is that many of the drugs that I receive as prescribed by my doctor were manufactured in India. This over reliance on India was even brought to my attention some few years back by a young lady who was working at a private clinic. She was saying thanks to the Indians for many of the necessary drugs which could have been very costly are now cheaply available from India. I captioned my first article then: Thanks for the Indians…, as the young lady also said.

The second article I made reference to earlier was in response to the perennial ASUU strikes. In that write up I enjoined ASUU to be more creative instead of relying perpetually on the strike option. Since the article was also posted on the public domain on the web, a lecturer in one of the Nigerian universities wrote his response to my mail box where he said it was not the function of the lecturers to find out whether existing resources given the universities were judiciously used or not.

In its current editorial, Daily Trust is still calling for funding of Nigerian universities. But my question is this: funding them to do what? I do believe we have lost the focus of education. If graduates were really to be employed in institutions that will extract the best out of them, then of certainty, half-baked graduates will fall out; and there will be public outcry for reform of the sector. Do we really know whether a Nigerian engineer is properly qualified or not? In whichever ministry they find themselves, they are engaged in nothing more than preparation of estimates, and colluding with contractors who favor them to skew the bidding in their favor. In many instances, sophisticated engineering works are undertaken by foreign expertise, so we cannot know whether our engineers are capable of undertaking such work or not. Medical advances today are greatly helped by use of computers and other equipment. If in their training our undergraduate medical students did not get such exposure how can they compete internationally?

We cannot really escape from the funding issue. However for funding to be effective, universities must democratize, they have to open up. I would surely attempt at a later date to browse the web to see whether the approved budgets of some universities have been posted there. What are the budgets tagged? What challenges have been identified? Which research areas are guaranteed funding? Which research results are available for sale, patronage?

I agree with Daily Trust when they called for the facilitation of favorable learning atmosphere in our universities. I however am inclined to see it more broadly than giving a facelift to existing hostels or erecting new ones. University environment should challenge the minds of all residents. Both students and lecturers should feel that there is a goal beyond marking scripts and later dishing out certificates.

Nigerian universities should first and foremost be made to feel that they are in a global race. In that race, so far as the statistics quoted by DT is concerned they are nonentities. There is a mass population; but one that is totally disoriented; but one that is however married to current reality: that reality is that a student should pass out with a certificate bearing the logo or emblem of that university. Whatever may happen later in the labor market, may be ascribed to either chance or political or clan patronage.

Of recent many universities advertised for the positions of Vice Chancellor. I was tempted to apply believing that the challenges facing universities is more managerial than academic. With a managerial bent of mind; that is a mind that is results oriented, one can find ways and means of squeezing extra juices out of existing resources. Management entails also the ability to motivate. The variables here are both staff and students; of more importance, the students. If the horizon of the students is expanded, if they are made to see life beyond a certificate that does not carry the full meaning, one would have gone along way in shaping the future of the universities.

The first requirement to be qualified for the position of a Vice Chancellor is to be a Professor. One should have published many academic papers in acceptable journals; undertaken and supervised researches and so on. I have none of these. What I do have is a vision of what a university ought to be; who are its pillars; and what to do to strengthen those pillars in order to support it better. But like many things Nigerian, we are more comfortable with semblance rather than reality. Without a motivator, cash and many facelifts will not do the trick. Vice Chancellors have come to be seen as political office holders. They have to fit into the surrounding society’s power structure, as it is the one that will absorb them after they complete their term of office. Right from the onset therefore, such a candidate has lost vision. His or her mission is to maintain just enough peace for the make-believe to continue in the name of learning. Meanwhile those with a violent streak dominating their nature come to see through the whole charade, and insist that authorities have lost the moral platform on which to stand and shape or direct their affairs. Using cultism they unleash terror with which they hope to cow adversaries, (lecturers inclusive) into submission.

And universities must suffer from the same neglect which other segments of the society are suffering from those who cannot manage human resources. Our leaders do not have the time to think and plan how to galvanize such tremendous human resource as Nigeria’s population to greater productivity and glory. As a result they leave many to either rot or under-perform through out life due to poor education or lack of supporting infrastructure.

Our universities must reflect what we are as a people. The moment we choose to be different, they will also be different. It is the will to choose that has so far eluded us.