Unwise proliferation of tertiary institutions in Nigeria

“The National Executive Council acknowledged the growing understanding of the issues and the groundswell of support for the union’s principled demand for a globally competitive university education in Nigeria. Nigerian universities must not be reduced to constituency projects that merely exist on paper, and our scholars must be incentivised to stay back and do what they know best, here in Nigeria.” – ASUU President, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, in a press release on Monday, August 1, 2022

A piece of news in The PUNCH on Monday, August 1, 2022 caught my attention. It’s titled “N’Assembly proposes 63 new varsities, others, experts kick.”  The report has it that no fewer than 63 bills have been tabled before the Senate and the House of Representatives for the creation of new universities, polytechnics, colleges of education since the beginning of shutdown of activities in public tertiary institutions in the country in 2022. The Academic Staff Union of Universities, Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics and Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union have, however, warned the government against the establishment of new institutions while failing to fund the existing ones.

I liken the situation to a man who has five children and couldn’t feed them, only to decide to have fifty in order to prove his virility at reproduction. Is that not foolhardiness? According to the aforementioned news story, Nigeria has a total of 49 federal universities. The official data from the National Universities Commission also revealed that the country has 59 state universities and 111 private universities. The National Board for Technical Education puts the number of Federal Polytechnics at 40; state owned at 49 and private at 76. While a total of Federal and state owned colleges of health is 70, Nigeria currently has 17 private colleges of health. Also, the National Commission for Colleges of Education put the total number of colleges of education in Nigeria at 219.

According to that report, an analysis of the 63 bills on creation of new institutions being considered by both the Senate and the House of Representatives revealed that 26 bills are for federal universities; 33 bills for federal colleges of education; agriculture; health; technology; and forestry among other specialised colleges. The lawmakers also proposed four bills for the creation of new polytechnics.

Truth be told, it is not as if these intuitions are not needed given the current low carrying capacity of the existing tertiary institutions. However, the big question is that these institutions are not being established on the need basis but more as political patronage. Like the ASUU President observed, they are being established as lawmakers’ constituency projects. Federal Character Principles are jettisoned in citing these institutions, while funding and sustainability are least considered. When institutions of higher learning are being established for campaign purposes, then, there is a problem.

As I write this, ASUU has been on strike since February 14, 2022. This was after similarly going on strike for nine months in 2020; therefore making the public universities to lose a session. Among the grouses of ASUU is the Federal Government’s non-implementation of the Memorandum of Action it signed with ASUU on December 23, 2020.

 Specifically, the issues include Federal Government’s failure to conclude the process of renegotiating the 2009 FGN/ASUU Agreement, deploy the University Transparency and Accountability Solution, pay outstanding arrears of Earned Academic Allowances, release agreed sum of money for the revitalisation of public universities (federal and states), address proliferation and governance issues in state universities, settle promotion arrears, release withheld salaries of academics, and pay outstanding third-party deductions.

It has often been said that the reason there is a need to establish more universities, polytechnics and colleges of education is because only one in four students who apply to these institutions get admitted even when they pass the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination and the post-UTME exams. However, a Premium Times newspaper report of September 30, 2021 put a lie to this assertion. The news report stated that tertiary institutions in the country failed to utilise over 400,000 admission slots in 2020 despite hundreds of thousands of candidates available to fill such spaces according to a report by the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board.

According to a JAMB policy document obtained by Premium Times, the over 400,000 unallocated admission spaces represent 43.78 per cent of the total admission quota in 2020 UTME. Data purportedly extracted from the document show that tertiary institutions only admitted 551,553 candidates out of the 956,809 admission quota available to them from the 2020 UTME. While over 40 per cent of the admission quota was not utilised, JAMB said “some institutions took undue advantage to manipulate quota of regulated programmes during preparation of parameters to admit candidates more than the approved capacity.”

It is quite unfortunate that many tertiary institutions reject qualified applicants based on spurious reasons. Ironically, while many public tertiary institutions are oversubscribed by prospective students, private tertiary institutions are looking for students to come and study in their schools. Unfortunately, the high cost of schooling at these private schools is one of the key reasons they often do not fill their JAMB quota. Truth be said, how many parents can afford to pay the millions of naira per session being demanded by these private tertiary institutions? Although they allow for payments by instalment, how many parents can still afford it?

In my own opinion, ‘mushrooming’ tertiary institutions is not the way to solve the problem of low-carrying capacity of these schools. What essentially needs to be done is to expand the infrastructure in the extant ones. Many of these ivory towers have large expanses of lands that are lying fallow. They can expand academic infrastructures on these lands in multiple ways. For instance, they can do Public – Private –Partnership whereby private developers can be engaged to build more hostel accommodation, lecture theatres, laboratories, libraries, and administrative blocks while the developer recoup their investments over a long period of time, perhaps 10 or 20 years. It’s akin to taking a mortgage on a property.

Another way is to sell off part of the school landed property to develop it. These institutions can also appeal to alumni associations, philanthropists and public spirited individuals to come to the aid of the school by donating buildings and furniture. There is also an endowment fund that can be launched to support the development of the school infrastructure. These ivory towers can also raise money via loans from financial institutions as well as through setting up of consultancy services. I know for instance that universities of Lagos and Ibadan have ventures that bring them extra income. I know that UNILAG Ventures has a bakery, water factory, car wash services, soap making, etcetera. It also manages the Guest House. Students can also be made to pay pocket friendly development levy that can be channelled to develop some of the school’s infrastructure. The caveat, however, is that this internally generated revenue and indeed those obtained through interventionist agencies like Tertiary Education Trust Fund and Federal Government education budget must be transparently and judiciously managed. There must be zero tolerance for corruption which has been the bane of our development.

If there is significant expansion of infrastructure in existing federal and state tertiary institutions, their carrying capacity would be significantly enhanced and as such, there would be no need to establish more which may suffer gross underfunding as the extant ones currently face. The National Assembly should therefore put a stop to proliferation of tertiary institutions and fight for the proper funding of the ones already established. I do hope the Federal Government will sign the Prof Nimi Briggs Committee renegotiated agreement with ASUU without further delay, so that the union can call off the  strike which has entered its 170th day today.