Ochefu: Rot in Nigeria’s Education System Has Been on for 40 Years
Prof Yakubu Ochefu is the Secretary-General of the Committee of Vice Chancellors in Nigeria. In this interview with Funmi Ogundare, the professor of Economic History and Development Studies explained why Nigeria must take its education seriously and provide an operating environment for people to work and earn a decent living. Excerpts:
How would you describe the current state of education in Nigeria, and how can the country drive the necessary changes?
The current state of education in Nigeria, in general, and university education in particular, is very bad. We have had this sad situation of under-investment in our educational institutions for nearly 40 years now based on the development index of countries that are at par with us as far as development is concerned. We have not made the right investments in the training of the teachers. We have not made the right investment in the curriculum of our educational institutions with the economy and society. We have not made the right quantum of equipment in terms of infrastructure, especially teaching and learning infrastructure. We have not gotten it right in terms of the changing dynamics in the philosophy of education, which is very important in the sense that depending on your development agenda and where you are in the context of your development status, your philosophy of education must be aligned to that. And then finally, we have not made the right investment or not taken the right decisions in terms of the governance structure of our educational institutions. So when you put all of that together, we have a bit of education that is extremely challenged. It behoves all the stakeholders in the education ecosystem to come together to think through. This has been going on for a while, but ultimately, the political will to track some of the difficult decisions that need to be made for us to break through these challenges, are not forthcoming and that is why in the last 30 years, we are not solving the problems. For Nigeria to drive the necessary change, we need to make the right investment in education. At this stage of our national development, our education budget should be at least 15 per cent of GDP across all levels.
What’s the way forward regarding the FG-ASUU impasse?
In terms of the political will to take certain decisions in terms of the governance structure of our educational institutions, I hold the strong view that government does not really have any business in participating or investing in secondary or basic education at those levels. I believe that government does not have any business focusing on them. These are things that should be handled by a municipal government, local government or by the community at that level. They should hand off all Unity colleges and all secondary school level educational services but focus on post-secondary education, and in focusing on post-secondary education, they must look at the operating environment and how is the governance of these institutions structured. How are the governance organs of the Nigerian federal universities structured? Are they structured to deal with the type of autonomy that they require to do the type of things that universities all over the world are doing? And that ties to the current face-off they are having with ASUU. On the one hand, the universities are supposed to be independent entities established by the law of the National Assembly, and the law empowers them to carry out their services independent of any other university.
What is your view about the struggle for university autonomy, IPPIS and UTAS?
For me, IPPIS should not be a platform that should be used by any university at all because the law establishing a university says its governing council has the responsibility to oversee its finances, so if that is the case, then why is somebody else determining my finances? The federal government says they are doing so because they want to know how many people are drawing salaries from the federation account and that’s why they have this platform. In your ministry, you can do that, but the university is an independent entity established by law. Why did you put them on that platform? That platform was very ill-conceived. Its operation began to short-change everybody and cut people’s salaries at will. Professors saw their salaries being cut to an all-time low. The tax structure that IPPIS is using, nobody knows, and so when ASUU now challenged the fact that there’s something fatally flawed about IPPIS, the government got angry, but it came to pass when the former accountant general who was supervising IPPIS was found to have manipulated the system to enrich himself to the tune of N70 billion. So that justified all the noise that ASUU was making that this system is fatally flawed. Beyond the technical flaws is the software. Let each university look for money to pay its staff as they were doing in the past. That is what it should be according to their law. The government can now interpret its own law. You have conflicting laws, and on the other hand, you have a law that says universities are financially independent and autonomous, so that needs to be reconciled. Each university should handle its finances the way it ought to.
There are people who believe that we have to borrow just to end the crisis. Do you also share in this belief?
There are three things you have to borrow for. If you don’t have food, you have to go and borrow, if you are sick, you have to borrow, and if you don’t have money to pay school fees, you have to borrow. These are the things that every nation in the world borrow for because these are the basic blocks of life . You are borrowing to do all manner of things and then when it comes to borrowing for education, you now say you cannot borrow for that.
What’s been the role of the Committee of Vice Chancellors in the FG-ASUU crisis?
The committee of vice chancellors have always been in the background of major policy decisions in this country. You will recall that CVCN was established in 1952, and over the years, they have been making policy suggestions that have been adopted. Things like JAMB, Nigeria University Games ( NUGA) and NYSC came out of the policy conversation of the committee. So we have been there in the background, trying to bring all parties together and letting the government know the appropriate steps to take. So, whatever agreement that is signed between the government and ASUU, it is the vice chancellors as operators of the system that will implement it. So the CVCN is always at the background proffering ideas and new solutions on the best way that these issues can be handled. For instance, we have warned the federal government that they should not force the universities to reopen because if they do so, it will have very negative consequences on the system. We know that if universities are opened by force, students come back to campus, and the lecturers are not teaching them. Then we will be sitting on a time bomb. We know that one, as a matter of fact, so we provide the government with ideas for them to consider.
Are you aware that some universities did not join the strike?
Some federal and state universities did not join the strike because of the kind of laws that they have. Some state universities did not join because they are either not members of ASUU or because their schools were suspended from ASUU for one act of misdemeanour or another. Some state universities are already enjoying what ASUU is asking for, so they did not see any reason to go on strike. For example, at Rivers State University, the salary that ASUU is even negotiating , for now, is not up to what they are currently enjoying. So if you are on a salary of N450,000 and you are negotiating with the federal government to pay you N800,000, and they are refusing, the N800,000 is not even what a professor in Rivers State University is already earning, why will you go on strike? For the federal universities, the process of becoming part of ASUU is such that some are not qualified for. They are like observer members and ASUU does not allow them to participate in their decisions.
There seems to be a dearth of professors and graduate assistants due to the federal government’s introduction of IPPIS, which doesn’t recognise adjunct professors and those on sabbaticals.
According to the records of the National Universities Commission ( NUC), we don’t have enough professors within our university system. We don’t have enough graduate assistants within our university system. About 55 per cent of our lecturers have PhD, so the position of the graduate assistant is not that bad. What has happened is that because of the circular from the Office of the Head of Service, universities are not able to recruit graduate assistants as they should. Normally, if you graduate at the top of your class, your position as a graduate assistant is almost automatic. But now, you cannot employ any one staff for the university except you get express permission from the office of the head of service.
How can the country reverse the trend of brain drain?
Because of the cost of the operating environment that our brilliant people in academics find themselves in, they are poached by talent hunters from other parts of the world, so the cost of training a medical doctor in a Nigeria public university for over six years is about $1,000. So they are trained very cheaply. Nigerians are very smart and talented. The same medical students who are trained for $ 1,000 in Nigeria will probably need to spend $300,000 in the US or UK for the same thing. There are not a lot of people in those climes that can afford medical education, but in Nigeria, medical education in public universities is very, very cheap. So we are using our resources to train our manpower for other countries. It shouldn’t be so. The reason why they migrate is because, like I said, the operating environment and compensation are favourable. For instance, a professor who is earning N450,000 in a Nigerian university is offered a salary package of N5 million a month if you do the conversion. A recent study was done on medical doctors in the United States. You know, about 44 per cent of them said that if they are offered half of what they are currently enjoying in the US, they will come back to Nigeria. So we are the ones who are shooting ourselves in the legs by using our resources to train our manpower for other countries.
In the face of wanton kidnap and abduction in the country, how do you think we can effectively curb insecurity in our schools?
The challenge of insecurity has been with us for quite a while, as we know where it is coming from. It is coming from education and poverty. The nexus between education and poverty and its implication on security is very clear. So we’re not making the right investment in education. If you educate your populace and provide them with a conducive environment, then you are killing two birds with one stone, and that will open the lid off the security challenge. All the young people who are involved in kidnapping, cattle rustling and terrorism are all driven by economic pressure.
