Our public universities are still close and no one is sure when it will be re-opened. The Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) is protesting the inability of government to implement an agreement on funding the university system. By studies conducted by ASUU in 2010, the cost of training undergraduates to full accreditation status is $3,364. With a student population put at no less than 800,000, close to N2 trillion is needed to fund the education system.
Our current budget is N9.12 trillion. Of this, capital expenditure has 31.5 per cent, which comes to N2.87 trillion. Recurrent non-debt spending has N3.51 trillion earmarked for it in 2018. N2.01 trillion is meant for debt servicing. The entire sum meant for the Ministry of Education is N542 billion. If everything is given to universities, it still will not achieve the aim. We will need to add the N55.15 billion meant for health, the N300 million for National Health Act, the N25.1 billion for promotion and development of value chain, the N5.30 billion for National Grazing Reserve Development, the N109 billion for Universal Basic Education Commission and many more for university education to be what it really should be. What this means is that these sectors will suffer. These competing needs, such as infrastructure, defence, security, health and other needs require government’s urgent attention too. It is bad enough that we have bad roads and other infrastructure everywhere. What will happen if education gets their shares of the federal budget?
Long ago, the idea of an Education Bank, which will provide loans to students to fund their education and pay back when they begin to earn income, started floating in the air. This should be a right as propounded by the National Council on Education (NCE). The NCE approved the establishment of Education Bank and Study Loan Boards by states at concessionary interest rate to allow students easy access to fund. The council also asked all states of the federation to establish what it called “Education Fund” with special emphasis on funding teacher development and secondary education.
I believe this will also help the much-talked about autonomy for varsities. May be to allay one of the fears expressed by the ASUU top gun, the scheme may be limited to students of public universities. After all, the rich can afford to pay for the private universities.
Aside the student loan, another way education is funded abroad is scholarship schemes by government and private sectors. The Federal Government has one in place, which I believe can be improved upon. The schemes run by state governments should also be improved upon and they will help to make available the needed resources to develop our varsities.
My plea: ASUU and the Federal Government must find a meeting point. Things are bad in our universities and closing it for months is bad for our students. For the sake of our country, a truce must be reached and the doors open for students to return to the lecture theatres.
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