Reckless Proliferation of Public Universities

Davidson Iriekpen argues that the latest move by the National Assembly to create a new university despite the under-funding of existing institutions, is a reflection of federal government’s misplaced priorities

The House of Representatives recently stirred the hornet’s nest when it passed the first reading of a bill to establish the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Federal University of Nigerian Languages in Aba, Abia State.

The bill sponsored by the Deputy Speaker, Hon. Benjamin Kalu, and eight others, aims to promote the learning of Nigerian languages. According to Section II, Part I of the bill, the university will “encourage the advancement of learning and provide opportunities for all individuals, regardless of race, creed, sex, or political beliefs, to acquire higher education in Nigerian languages and cultures.”

The bill also seeks to develop academic and professional programmes that lead to diplomas, degrees, and postgraduate research, focusing on practical skills in Nigerian languages and cultures to foster national development.

Once established, the university would act as a catalyst for effectively utilising Nigeria’s natural, economic, and human resources through postgraduate training, research, and innovation. It also aims to collaborate with other national institutions involved in the training and development of Nigerian languages and cultures, while promoting a comprehensive training and research activities, including outreach and continuing education.

The university would no doubt add to the existing number of universities in the country at a time when key stakeholders in the education sector, including the Academic Staff Union Universities (ASUU) are condemning the proliferation of tertiary institutions in the country due to their neglect and gross under-funding.

According to a list released by the National Universities Commission (NUC), Nigeria currently has a total of 262 universities with 52 federal universities (including defence and police academies), 63 state-run universities and 147 private universities. According to estimates, over 90 per cent of the country’s students are in the public universities.

For the government, politics and the sense of entitlement by political office holders influence the choice of location of these universities and explain the rush to establish them.

On the part of the private investor, the motive is profit. 

Despite the huge shortfall in budgetary allocations and in actual funding for education at both state and federal levels in Nigeria, the proliferation of public universities has continued. This has been identified as a setback for the development of the tertiary education sector.

While these universities have suffered years of neglect due to inadequate funding, the federal government has also failed to honour its agreement with ASUU.

The situation is evidenced in dilapidated infrastructure, poorly equipped laboratories, under-staffing, poor pay and poor emoluments of staff and faculty.

Constantly, the federal and state governments have complained that they are broke and cannot fulfill the FG/ASUU agreement to revitalise tertiary education. 

This is why the idea of building one university from scratch at a time when the country is struggling with a weak economy is nothing but a purely misplaced priority.

Sadly, between 1999, when Nigeria reverted to democracy, and June 2022, the universities were shut for 1,404 days owing to the strike following the union’s demand for improved funding.

Despite these challenges, the government has continued to create universities to satisfy federal lawmakers and other government functionaries who want public universities in their constituencies.

One of the major arguments by the government to justify the proliferation is the need to give access to university education to young Nigerians as nearly over two million candidates write the University Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) annually. This argument doesn’t hold water in view of the numbers released by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). In 2019, JAMB stated that 612,557 candidates secured “admission and about 510,957 admission spaces were unused by tertiary institutions (polytechnics and monotechnics inclusive).” This does not indicate space problems for admission seekers but suggests far more salient issues.

Instead of the federal and state governments and the parliaments to adopt a more rational, scientific, and development-oriented approach to higher education, it is mostly considering primordial motives. According to those who spoke with THISDAY, pushing for the establishment of new institutions at a period when the existing ones are grossly under-funded shows lack of seriousness and rigour in law-making.

While students in private institutions enjoy an unbroken academic calendar and quality teaching, the story in federal and state institutions is pathetic. Besides, there is a chronic shortage of teaching staff in federal and state universities.

Between 2010 and 2014, the then President, Goodluck Jonathan, established over 12 new federal universities. His justification was that all states should have universities but that was ridiculous, given that the take-off grant for each institution was a paltry N2 billion. 

Under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, more public universities sprang up, including those for the Nigerian Army and Nigerian Air Force. These days, universities are cited in all Nigerian communities that produced the heads of the organisations that own public universities.

In the First Republic, the heads of the regional governments prudently established universities far away from their communities in Ile-Ife, Zaria and Nsukka.

 They understood that universities operate on global ideals and standards. This is not the case today where politicians see the idea of establishing the institutions as part of politics and constituency projects.

Although the United Kingdom has a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $2.82 trillion (compared to Nigeria’s $466.88 billion), its universities increased by only one, from 141 in 2017 to 142 in 2018, according to government data. In the decade to 2018, the increment was 23. This is a reasonable, sound regulatory system to curb proliferation and sustain quality.

Consequently, Nigerian universities rank abysmally low internationally. In the latest Webometrics ranking, no Nigerian university made the first 1,000 globally. The best, the University of Ibadan, ranks 1,231; Covenant University 1,370; Obafemi Awolowo University 1,477; and the University of Nigeria 1,622.

ASUU President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, had condemned the mass establishment of universities in the country, describing the development as ‘reckless and excessive.’ He lamented that university education was suffering due to total neglect by the government.

Osodeke noted that the federal and state governments were establishing more universities without making adequate provision for their funding, adding that many of the new institutions were only established for political reasons. He regretted that the ugly trend has put much stress on the intervention funds of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), alleging that some of the new universities are being established with money diverted from TETFund. He expressed concern that public universities are being underfunded by the federal and state governments, leaving the student population and Nigerian education sector to suffer.

Instead of seeking to get students who have lost almost one academic session back to school, legislators are fixated on scoring cheap political points in their respective constituencies. Funding of existing institutions should be the top priority of the government, not establishing new ones.