The excessive control of universities by the federal government has been part of the centralisation of powers by the government since the federalisation of regional universities in 1975. In that year, the federal government took over the four regional universities (Benin, Ife, Nsukka, and Zaria) and established seven more. Over the next six decades, the number of federal universities would grow from 2 (Ibadan and Lagos) in 1962 to 52 in 2023.
Within this period of expansion, three key agencies of the federal government were established to exercise control over the universities, namely, the National Universities Commission (1962); the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (1978); and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (2011, originally established in 1993 as Education Trust Fund). Periodic revisions of the functions of these agencies have increased their powers over the years.
The NUC
Originally established as an advisory agency in the cabinet office, the NUC has since taken a life of its own, beginning in 1974, when it became a statutory body and one of the parastatals under the Federal Ministry of Education. Subsequent revisions of its mandate gave it a Governing Council and as many as twelve directorates.
Today, its functions include granting approval for the establishment of new universities; accreditation of all academic programmes; ensuring quality assurance of all academic programmes; and channelling government subvention and external support to Nigerian universities. The Commission has now grown into an amorphous and powerful institution.
Under cover of quality assurance, the Commission developed curriculum templates for university courses, indicating the basic content of the courses in order to meet “minimum academic standards”. But this precisely is the function of the University Senate, which also approves results at the end of each semester and degrees at the completion of each course.
The normal procedure for creating courses in the university is for each faculty member (that is, lecturer or professor) to create a new course (if necessary) in his or her specialty in collaboration with his or her Head of Department. Such a new course would be discussed at the Faculty Board meeting before the final draft is presented to the University Senate for discussion and approval. Therefore, NUC’s curriculum intervention is a clear usurpation of the traditional function of the University Senate.
What is even worse is the sham that the accreditation exercise has become over the years. To start with, universities are charged for the exercise, although the NUC has a budget for its duties. To complicate matters, it is common knowledge that, in preparation for accreditation, universities borrow equipment, hire professors on sabbatical leave, appoint adjunct faculty, and even falsely create space for classroom activities.
At the end of the day, the accreditation team goes away with a brown envelope, after being housed and feasted for the duration of the exercise. Ultimately, many courses are accredited for which staff, equipment, and space are inadequate, if not non-existent. Yet, “staffing” and “physical facilities” account for over 50 percent of the points awarded for accreditation. To accommodate the funding gap that the NUC itself bemoans, funding is awarded only 5 percent of the points!
Numerous studies have faulted the ways in which the NUC carries out its duties as well as the lack of adequate measures for ensuring uniformity of the standards it seeks to establish across the universities. Equally missing in its supervisory role is university administration, which is critical to the implementation of university projects and programmes.
Since inadequate funding is a critical factor hampering the work of the Commission and the smooth running of the universities, it is high time the NUC told the government that neither the Commission nor the universities could function properly without adequate resources. It will not even be too much if the NUC chorused the outcry by ASUU against poor funding.
The JAMB
The JAMB is another parastatal under the Ministry of Education. Its specific function is to administer the examinations, whose results are combined with the WASSCE, NECO, or other certificates in university admission processes. However, unlike the NUC, JAMB really does not exert controlling influence on the universities. Rather, it only functions as a clearinghouse for the admission process. Contrary to popular perception, universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education, not JAMB, determine their cut-off points for admission, pick their students, and only send their list to JAMB to ensure conformity to agreed standards and prevent rampant illegal admissions.
Moreover, JAMB is a self-sustaining institution that derives funds from the sale of forms for the examinations it conducts. Since Professor Is-haq Oloyede took over as Registrar in 2016, JAMB has disbursed over N50 billion Naira to federal government coffers, to capital projects, to corporate social responsibility, and to support other institutions.
It is in conducting the examinations that JAMB has been accused of excessiveness in its policing duties. Nevertheless, these were necessary in order to prevent examination malpractices. Anyone who has participated in JAMB’s annual policy meetings would marvel at the range and extent of malpractices uncovered in various Computer Based Test centres. To avert these problems, JAMB decided to build its own CBT centres across the country, rather than rely on privately owned centers.
TETFund
The primary function of TETFund is to administer funds collected as 2 percent tax on all companies operating in Nigeria to fill the funding gaps in tertiary institutions. However, the disbursement of these funds has been a major problem over the years. Few institutions or lecturers are motivated enough to apply for project or research funding. Others are discouraged by the disproportionate disbursement of the funds, whereby some universities in certain parts of the country get a larger share of the funds than others. Even those that are funded often have strings attached to them as indicated last week on this column. The result is that surplus funds are left unutilised year after year. A reasonable percentage of the funds should be shared across the institutions so that each one could use its share to address the most pressing needs. Special reports should be submitted on project completion and a list of funded projects and their recipients should be published annually for the public to see.
Besides these three agencies, three other ways were introduced to exert further control over the universities. They are: (1) the requirement to remit 40 of IGR collected; (2) salary payment via the IPPIS; and (3) job vacancy waivers. These are measures that easily could have provided cover for fraud, which was already going on with the job vacancy waivers. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should be commended for preventing these measures, either from taking off or from further implementation. He should order a review of the operations of the NUC, JAMB, and TETFund in order to make them more efficient and also grant more autonomy to the universities.
