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 Nigeria
versus foreign varsities
A way to determine the level of competitiveness of Nigerian
universities system today is the publication that is usually done
once in a year about the month of June. That is a publication of
world ranking of universities. That of this year shows that no
Nigerian universities was chosen among the 500 topmost universities
in the world. Not one was chosen. Most of the universities from
Africa that featured are either from South Africa or Eastern Africa.
Now, among the 100 topmost universities in Africa itself, only four
Nigerian universities featured. These are Obafemi Awolowo University
which was number 44, University of Ibadan 65, University of Benin 73
and University of Lagos.
You would recall that no state or private universities was ranked,
although last year, the Lagos Business School featured. So, the
situation is that we are not competitive at all. And the major
reason is that we are not doing research. Many people don’t realize
that a university is not a school for teaching but basically an
institution for research. That is why we are not making it. We are
not published in international journals or participating in
international conferences because the money is not there. Worst
still, because the way the VCs and academic staff are now appointed
have become corrupted, the university system in Nigeria is actually
in serious crisis.
Private varsities no threat to public varsities
Certainly not. The academics in private universities sometimes
interact with us. We know that they themselves are in serious
difficulties. Most academics in private universities are burdened
with far more teaching than they ought to carry. Secondly, they are
poorly built. Thirdly, they hardly have facilities for research.
They even have much less than that we have in the public sector. The
only thing is that people are confusing the issue of no strike in
private universities as an evidence that they are doing well. No,
they may be teaching continuously but as I said earlier on, the most
important function of a university is not teaching; what we ought to
be doing really is helping to solve national problem through
research. The government is not even challenging us in that area.
For example, have they commissioned any department of Political
Science or Social Science to provide solution to the issue of
conducting free and fair elections? That has not been done. It is
done in University of London where I schooled. My own professor was
always consulted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Britain. This
is not happening in Nigeria.
Half-baked graduates
We, teachers regret that we are bringing out students who are not
properly groomed. Students, these days, do projects only in the
library. In my time, that wasn’t the situation. You had to go out to
the field and find out what was happening in the world and use that
as an empirical evidence to support your theory. No such thing is
going on whether in the federal, state or private universities
today. We are producing half-baked product. That is correct. But it
is much worse in private universities than in federal and state
universities.
And I think the major reason is that the Federal Government have not
frankly sat itself down and asked itself what is the place of
universities in nation development. If they asked that question, we
would not be quarrelling about funding. So, when ASUU says give us
26 per cent of the national budget, they won’t quarrel about it.
They would now see the relevance of the university to solving all
kinds of problems, whether it is economy, energy problems, or even
the problem in the Niger Delta. It is because they have not realized
the importance of well-funded education, that there is this apparent
conflict between government and ASUU. And it is important to stress
that ASUU is fighting for everybody – councils, chancellors,
academic and non-academic staff - in order to ensure that the
university system doesn’t collapse. As a matter of fact, if ASUU
does not exist, it has to be invented because without ASUU,
university system would have collapsed a long time ago.
Academic freedom
You know that there is this rather simplistic interpretation of
relationship of funding and autonomy. When they say that he who pays
the piper dictates the tune, that is a misunderstanding of what we
are really looking for. What are we looking for? We are not saying
that government should hands up universities in terms of funding.
No, what we are saying is that there are conditions under which
academic can strive. If, for example, you have breach the ability of
the academics to speak freely, then, obviously, the academic will
stop research, because what research actually means is that you can
make findings that go contrary to the general belief of the country
and yet you are bold enough to declare it. That requires academic
freedom.
We’re not even saying that government alone should bear the burden
of funding. Not at all. What we are saying is that it should be a
joint venture between parents, Federal Government and the private
sector. That was why we initiated the whole thing about Education
Tax Fund (ETF) in 1992, although they dragged on until 1994/95
before implementing it. We don’t believe that the Federal Government
or state government for that matter should carry 100 per cent or 90
per cent of funding.
Indictment of some VCs and others
That was part of the tragedy of the government of Gen. Olusegun
Obasanjo. You know when the result of the transparency panel was
released in 1999/2000, we struggled to make the Federal Government
to agree to distribute the white paper to universities. But they
developed cold feet. That particular white paper had two things. One
was ordinary directives from the government. The other was document
that was in council. I knew it was called Action Point; thing that
must be done in the directive. Unfortunately, government played a
lot of politics with it. Let me give you example of University of
Ilorin; government decided that because the content of the white
paper on University of Ilorin was influenced mainly by the
presentation of ASUU, that the report never existed any longer. They
hid the report and the white paper. But we got it because we had
gone to Abuja, and they asked us to go and get the white paper. I
have it here in my study.
They forgot all that and now wanted to sweep the report under the
carpet because council and Vice chancellor were indicted for
financial mismanagement and they didn’t want to implement it. That
was one of the reasons the University of Ilorin councils and VC
never wanted the 49 academy staff back because they thought they
would continue to insist that the white paper be implemented. And
unfortunately, a whole Obasanjo who was once on the advisory body of
the Transparency International played along. But it was not just
about University of Ilorin. Many of the directives in many of the
white papers were not implemented. And the government did not ask
questions. So, what happened is that visitation panel is part of the
law. Every five years, there must be a visitation to every federal
universities. Federal Government never takes this serious, because
it has been playing politics with the fight against corruption.
ASUU’s longest strikes
Well, I led two long strikes. The first one was actually in August
1994, which was called off January 1995. Let me be very frank, that
strike was partly about our colleagues sacked in University of
Abuja. That was one of the major problems. There was also the fact
that we didn’t think it was right for Abacha’s government to just
wake up and implement the annulment of June 12, 1993 election. That
was what he did actually by replacing the democratic system that was
beginning to emerge with a military regime. We called off that
strike because we found out that many civil society organizations
were tired of fighting. They couldn’t sustain it any longer. Some
people had gone to jail while others had disappeared. So, we could
not have the coalition we wanted to build of NLC and civil society
to continue the struggle. Second reason we called it off was that we
were able to get the ETF. The implementation of the ETF increased
funding in the educational system generally. I think to some extent,
it was a principled fight. Therefore, it was justified. It would
have been wrong for academics to see what was happening to the
nation and kept quiet. That particular strike together with that of
1992 raised the stature of ASUU very much. If we have behaved
otherwise, I don’t think ASUU would have the reputation it has
today.
How to check brain drain
Those who made first class, genuine first class, very high second
class upper are not satisfied with the improvement of salaries
alone. They are never. They want to prove their mettle. They want to
do something significant in terms of research. They want to solve
problems – local problems, community problems within their area of
specialisation. They find no fulfilment, no matter how you improve
the salary, if they cannot carry out the projects they are having in
mind.
If you go to international conferences twice and find out that the
things you say are obselete, then you wonder what you are doing with
your life. Some people go abroad and find fulfilment there. There is
no challenge to us. Federal Government ought to begin to challenge
universities to find solutions to national problems and let them
stop giving these challenges to outsider and external consultants.
We too interact with these external consultants and know their
abilities.
I was once hired by UNDP, not just as an academic staff but as
somebody who is in the civil society to help prepare the ground for
the take off of ICPC. But they also brought an international
consultant to work with me. I was called the national consultant, he
was called the international consultant. Eventually, I did the work
and UNDP immediately realized I was the one who did the work.
That is a typical example of what happens. After all, many of us in
the university could compete with them. That is the truth. In my own
class in 1973, MUC class, University of London, London School of
Economic, there were about 30 of us. I was the only black. The other
came from either America or Britain or Asia and yet I don’t think I
was far behind them.
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