The shocking news that the venerable University of Ibadan (UI) is to receive the ridiculous sum of N66 million for capital projects this year is a grim testimony to the abysmally low funding for tertiary education in the country.
The irony of the situation is inescapable. The Nigerian Senate, which approved the allocation, is made up of 109 members, each of whom receives N13.5 million monthly in running costs alone. It is less than a third of the roughly N200 million that each of them will be getting for constituency projects. It is about 0.01 per cent of the N61.73 billion allocated to the capital expenditure budget for education in the 2018 budget.
The timing is particularly inauspicious, coming as it does in the 70th anniversary of the founding of the university.
Sixty-six million Naira is a ridiculous amount for a university that caters to 30,000 students and has a staff strength of about 6,000. That Nigerian senators could appropriate such a sum, apparently without a word of protest from the three senators representing Oyo State, clearly demonstrates how far removed public office-holders are from contemporary realities.
It also exposes the hypocrisy of a Federal Government which continuously harps on the advancement of tertiary education while refusing to provide at least some of the funds without which such goals can never be realised.
In 2017, the University of Ibadan received N99 million for capital projects, representing just 0.08 per cent of the N13 billion allocated to it. In the same year, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, got N215 million as capital allocation, 1.5 per cent of the N14 billion it received. Federal University, Oye-Ekiti got N164 million for capital projects, which was 6.7 per cent of the N2.3 billion allocated to it. As inadequate as these amounts are, they were rarely released on time or in full, due to the delay in passing the 2017 Appropriation Bill.
The consequence of this deplorable state of affairs is seen in the dilapidated classrooms, laboratories, libraries and other facilities that are vital to the process of teaching and research. The ever-increasing number of candidates seeking admission into federal universities exerts increased pressure on schools to admit more students, thereby putting more strain on already overstretched facilities, especially power, water, housing and other municipal services.
Because the lion’s share of government subventions goes to recurrent expenditures, universities are forced to resort to increasingly desperate ways of shoring up their internally-generated revenue. A common tactic has been to increase the fees students pay for accommodation and other services rendered by universities. This has often resulted in student protests which disrupt the academic calendar.
With such constraints, it is difficult to see how Nigeria’s universities can be expected to measure up to better-resourced counterparts elsewhere in Africa and in the world. Apart from robust government support at the national and regional levels, those schools have flourishing endowment funds which enable them to attract high-calibre faculty from all over the world and pursue cutting-edge research.
Nigeria has no option other than to do the same. An administration that can demand an additional US $1 billion to fight the Boko Haram insurgency should be able to see that a similar investment is required to win the battle for educational advancement which is even more important.
Greater sincerity in negotiating with university unions, a zero-tolerance approach towards corruption within universities, and increased efforts to alleviate the burdens on students will help to reverse the situation. Students in particular require greater access to scholarships and subsidies which lessen the cost of education; indigence should never be a barrier to learning in a nation that is critically deficient in human resources.