Govt responsibility for tertiary education is beyond approving private institutions.
It appears strange, if not odd, that barely two weeks to its exiting power, the Buhari administration has approved the establishment of 37 new private universities. As the education minister explained while briefing journalists after an extraordinary meeting of the Federal Executive Council last week, the move was to satisfy the yearning of teeming secondary school leavers. It brings the.number of private universities licenced by the Buhari government to 74.
This would ordinarily call for applause, but was it well thought out? Yes, they are private universities and would not be funded from public coffers. Yet, it is myopic to think that these private tertiary institutions could assuage the thirst of students for quality education at affordable price.
It should be noted that the government had earlier licensed 37 such institutions; 20 of them came on board in 2021. The number of private universities in Nigeria stands at 148 today. However, about 90 per cent of university undergraduates are in the 49 federal and 57 state government-owned universities. This is an indication that it would amount to poor policy formulation to think that private schools could substitute for public institutions in a country that continues to sink into poverty daily.
Besides, why the haste in granting the approval? Are there other reasons for quickly handing out the licenses before handover to a new administration? Otherwise, couldn’t the ministry have simply worked on the Memorandum, leave it on the table for a new minister to take to council? After all, in other circumstances, it has been held correctly that government is a continuum, by which all liabilities and assets are passed down from administration to administration.
The hydra headed, intractable challenges in the education sector cannot be treated cosmetically. The incoming Tinubu administration should realise that it requires serious attention at all levels, from pre-primary to tertiary. If Nigeria is to catch up with developed nations, it should be realised that quality education is the bedrock of development. Licensing new private schools that are unaffordable by the masses of Nigeria is simply not the way to go.
We are not by any means advocating free university education. What is required is putting in place instruments by which the private sector is encouraged to participate actively in all facets of tertiary education, including both funding and governance, after all stretching out the begging bowl can only attract pittance from consumers of finished products from the schools.
Despite federal intervention through the Education Trust Fund, not much has been achieved in giving the schools the needed face-lift. Lecture halls are very inadequate, laboratories lack reagents and other materials needed for practical teaching, audio-visual equipment are lacking, co-curricular materials are largely unavailable, large classes are not supplied with public address system that would get those seated at the back to follow the lecturers, and staff are poorly motivated.
These are issues that should receive the attention of government, not simply abdicating responsibilities to private universities primarily established to mine profit.
The incoming government has a duty to urgently convoke a summit of all stakeholders in the sector, including leaders of education committees in the 10th National Assembly, to review the legal framework, international best practices and extant policies. State governments and corporate Nigeria have to be fully involved if tangible and implementable results are to be recorded.
Nigeria lags far behind the developed world in university education, whereas small countries like Singapore, Finland, Norway and Sweden fare better. Even in Africa, South African universities are ahead of Nigeria’s.
No developing country can do well economically depending on private universities, while public institutions are left in ruins.(The nation)
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