The Nation Newspaper

Tag: higher institutions

  • Fixing admission to higher institutions wrong

    Fixing admission to higher institutions wrong

    Some months ago, without an act of parliament, the minister of education decreed that henceforth admission to higher institutions and to universities in particular henceforth will be for children 18 years and above. There was no reason given for this peremptory decision and it was not subject to debate or respect to the existing situation where each university decided the age limit of students to be admitted.

    In civilised democratic countries, this decision would have been debated and based on experience and logic, but in our case where those in authority usually arrogate all powers to themselves as if they were omniscient and all-knowing in every respect. Yet this ministry had in its files policy on exceptional and gifted children put in place when Professor Jibril Muhammad Aminu, an erudite and brilliant cardiologist and administrator held fort at the ministry of education. There was even an embryonic policy to create special schools for gifted children to facilitate their cerebral development and consequent contribution to the pool of knowledge which the country can tap into.

    As usual in Nigeria, we always try to reinvent the spinning wheel as if we were just beginning in our journey of development. We always have huge budget on construction of things like roads, railways, harbours, buildings, universities, hospitals just anything has to be started from the beginning. There is usually no stock-taking of what exists and how it can be fixed if it is not working. Politicians and apparently their civil servant advisers are not interested in repairs and reforms or refurbishment. This is because of the humongous amounts that would be allocated for new construction and what percentage would be available for sharing and this is what has gotten us to our parlous predicament.

    Read Also: Senior NNPC official faces contempt proceedings for allegedly flouting court orders

    I have good news for our minister of education and his advisers. As I write, a 16-year old Nigerian girl, Esther Okade born in 2006 to a mother who is a mathematician, Omanefe  Okade and Paul Okade has  just gotten a PhD in mathematics at the age of 16 in an English university. This prodigy of a child at three years old was solving quadratic equations at six. Esther passed ordinary level examination at age seven and Cambridge University offered her admission to their undergraduate program in mathematics. The parents demurred but enrolled her in distant learning college or the Open University. At that age of 10, she was the youngest university student in England and by 13, she graduated first class in financial mathematics and now at 16, the young girl has gotten a doctorate in mathematics.

    She is also an author, writing books in algebra for children with titles like “yummy yummy algebra” and with the support of her parents, she founded a school in Nigeria’s Delta State called the “Shakespeare Academy” where traditional subjects in the sciences, mathematics, English and liberal arts, ethics, etiquette and public speaking are taught to young children. Her story as an English commentator said has demonstrated that “genius is not age-specific; from solving quadratic mathematics as a toddler at age of three and bagging a PhD in financial mathematics at the age of 16, Esther has told the world that all things are possible if talents are encouraged and nurtured”.

    This is the story of a 16-year old girl in a liberal environment and not subjected to administrative and unreasonable diktat because of hidden political reasons designed to level everybody down rather than pulling everybody up.

    Is it not therefore strange to my readers that in a country where policies are made to cater for slow learning people rather than to extraordinary people, what you get is what we are getting in governance today where we don’t seem to know how to make use of God-given endowment to attain the level of development expected of us as species of Homo sapiens?

    There are brilliant and gifted children and adults everywhere in this country. Academic brilliance is not restricted to any region or ethnic or religious group as some people tend to feel. From my more than 55 years of being in university education I know this. I also know from personal history of my family and those whose paths crossed mine in the past. At the age of 16+ my late brother, Oluwakayode Osuntokun had passed out of Christ’s School Ado Ekiti with distinctions in all subjects but English where he got a credit score. For years to come, this remained the enviable record until George Fola Esan equalled the feat and their performances was shown to us younger people what was possible. The two gentlemen later in life became globally known physicians in Neurology and Haematology at very young g age.  Kayode got all the degrees available in medicine and the prizes in his field climaxing it with invitation to Royal Hammersmith College Hospital as first black visiting professor and subsequently examining in the Royal College of Medicine membership examination. The sterling performance of Osuntokun and Esan was replicated by Jibril Aminu’s performance in Barewa College, Zaria and later in life as a cardiologist. Omololu Olunloyo has done the same thing in Mathematics at a very young age and  graduated in his class as the best student in the entire Commonwealth. Animalu has performed the same feat in Engineering Mathematics in an American university. The country did not wait for slow runners to run at the same speed with these academic heroes.  Life is an individual race and we run at different paces because we are individual subjects in the hands of the grand author of life, the Almighty God. The Imafidon children in England are no less distinguished in their precocious performance as brilliant children. The Imafidon family is said to “be the brainiest family in the world”. It is a family of seven. The first children were twins, Peter and Paula achieving ordinary level qualifications at the age of nine and entering University of Cambridge, while their sister, Christine by the age of 14 had a Master’s degree in mathematics at Oxford University where she was retained as a lecturer. The other children have continued to distinguish themselves in sports and academics usually before expected age of maturity.  If these examples were in Nigeria, they would have been caught in the administrative web of government regulations.

    I am not disputing the fact that maturity and education go together but not necessarily in every case. This is why I am advocating that administrative regulations in the case under consideration have to be broad and flexible. I have no problems with having general policies for admission but it must be advisory in nature and not like a sword of Damocles hanging on everyone.

    If I were a legal professional, I would go to court but I don’t have money to hire a brilliant lawyer to argue the case of those of us who believe government should be an enabler in our lives not a hindrance or hurdles we need to scale over. I asked publicly that Femi Falana the peripatetic public defender should take my case up. I wonder that with all the enveloping problems besetting this government, restraining young people from going to universities at whatever age if they pass the entrance examination, should be the least worry of this government.

  • Reclaiming Nigeria’s higher institutions

    Like many other things Nigerian, higher education largely tells the story of acute dysfunction gnawing bitterly at the vein of the country. The increasingly frustrating steep decline in quality and standards of higher education graphically signposts the failure of visionary leadership that combines with other equally tragic factors to make the country a canyon of punishing underdevelopment.

    Flipside, it is also true that the unmitigated disaster that defines the single biggest orbit of black people as evidenced in the spiking youth unemployment, moribund healthcare system, dilapidated public infrastructure, miserable quality of life, and absence of structured thinking is itself a reflection of the failure of the country’s higher institutions.  To voice this in another way, if successive Nigerian political rulers have failed in giving the right attention to the continual development of higher education and institutions, those institutions too have failed (and still continue to let down) the country repeatedly.

    Tragically, higher institutions of learning in Nigeria have narrowed the objectives of their raison d’être. Where they have yet to totally lose their universe – to apply the same context of usage of that word by Prof. Niyi Osundare –, they have fully embraced mediocrity and fitfully remember their noble role as the engine room of the country’s developmental efforts. The years are far behind us when universities in this country were known for being the bright lights that dispelled the darkness of ignorance, confusion, and flailing barbarity. Those who know now lament the disappearance of the great times when Nigerian universities behaved really like sites of functioning knowledge production as is the character of such institutions.

    It now appears as fiction that there was a time when universities (small in number compared to what we have today) in Nigeria were not travelling on a path that did not connect with the crying needs of the country. Those were the years when employable and innovative minds were certified fit to join the larger society and contribute profoundly to its growth and development. They were years when the Nigerian society really awaited the graduation of those young Turks with rounded education that added value to humankind. They were years when functional knowledge and strong character, not the present satanic obsession with mere certification and hedonistic tendencies, defined the products of those lighthouses of knowledge.

    Is it any strange that only an inconsequential number of retiring old hands and roundly and soundly developed minds across our universities still understand the criticalness of the university to the continual attainment of impactful and enduring development? The point has to be made that any claim by a public university in Nigeria to excellence in scholarship, research, and undivided and undiluted attention to the full realisation of condition befitting a modern higher institution of learning is the equivalence of an act not different from the exercise of winking in the dark. The claim that one or two universities somewhere in the country represent what a university should really be in all possible particularities becomes hollow and inapt when attention is accorded the mind-concentrating reality that more than a throng of university graduates are so kindergarten in their thinking capability that to employ them would be synonymous to wrecking a viable enterprise. In any case, individual redemption in the midst of collective ruination is but a pyrrhic triumph.

    Really, it bothers the mind that with more universities, private and public, licensed to operate in Nigeria comes more ignorance – the type that was only possible in the Palaeolithic age – and a proud repudiation of knowledge as the bedrock of any development that will last and benefit people. That is, the more the higher institutions in post-colonial Nigeria, the fewer the portals of ideas and creativity and the more the woes of the land. The existence of higher institutions of learning in Nigeria means nothing to the multi-layered problems that are not above the ken of the human mind to solve.

    If we must use the sword of truth whose thrust has the efficacious power to redeem, now is the time to do something about putting an end to the gaping disconnect between our universities and the development of our country. Given the reality of the knowledge economy as we see it play out in other serious countries, it is high time Nigerian universities were snatched off the ruinous alley that makes it impossible for them to lead the way in the quest for socioeconomic and political advancement in Nigeria. Indeed, it is time to help our higher institutions reclaim their real mission and the ethics of sound enquiry, critique, questioning, and query – all of which are vital to prized knowledge production.

    Happily, the Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy (ISGPP), an independent institution committed to research and executive education in support of governance and policy work in Nigeria and Africa generally, has decided to champion the move for practicable solutions to that which ails higher education in Nigeria. In collaboration with the Pan-African University Press, Austin, Texas, USA, the ISGPP is organising a one-day seminar on the theme, “Getting Our Universities Back: Conversation on Higher Education in Nigeria”. The seminar is fashioned towards this objective: initiating practicable ideas for reclaiming the country’s higher education and institutions from the yawning abyss of rot, inefficiency, misplaced priorities, illiberalism, ossification, and infrastructural decay.

    With critical stakeholders in the higher education sector of the country, including former and serving vice-chancellors, rectors, provosts, government officials from relevant agencies, and international organisations with interest in higher education, this all-important gathering will meet minds on other topical issues as the Governance Role of the National Universities Commission; University Autonomy or Freedom: Academic, Administrative, or Financial?; Higher Education Funding: Challenges and Strategies; the Roles of Governing Councils and Staff Unions in Higher Institutions; Multiplication of Higher Institutions: Tonic or Toxicity for National Development?; and Global Ranking and Recognition: Impediments and Prospects. Critical attention will be given to other equally germane issues affronting higher education in Nigeria.

    This timely seminar is billed for Monday July 10, at the Conference Centre, University of Ibadan. While a world renowned History scholar, Prof. Toyin Falola, will be the chairman and moderator, an eminent political scientist and former Vice Chancellor of Adekunle Ajasin University, Prof. Oluwafemi Mimiko, will be the lead speaker. About six other lead panellists are expected to direct the horses of the discourse about how to reclaim Nigerian universities from forest of irrelevance. The results of those discussions will form critical policy ingredients that will be made available to concerned stakeholders and governments at state and federal levels.

    Without any modicum of doubt, the transformation of our higher education system will catalyse the sustainable development that Nigeria sorely needs. Retrogression will remain the lot of that country whose higher education structure does not play critical roles in its quest for progress.

     

    • Ademola is a Research Fellow at the ISGPP.

  • Govt adopts new accounting rules for higher institutions

    The Federal Government has directed all its higher institutions to, henceforth, submit their monthly trial balance to the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation.
    The government said each institution is also to submit a detailed account to the same office from this year as part of what it described as the efforts to ensure standard practices in the system.
    National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) Executive Secretary, Dr. Mas’uduKazaure made these known at the 30th quarterly meeting of the Association of Bursars of Polytechnics and Colleges of Technology (BURSCON) hosted by the Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech).
    Kazaure, represented by Dr. James Anyanwu, explained that compliance with the rules was mandatory, adding and that it is a continuation of reforms introduced into the public accounting system by the Accountant-General’s office.
    He identified other reforms to include E-payment system, integrated payroll and personnel information system as well as government integrated/financial management information system and national chart of accounts.
    Others are adoption of international public sector accounting standards, treasury single account and zero based budgeting.
    Kazaure said the revised scheme of service would have been ready had institutions contributed their dues billed for the exercise, urging defaulting institutions to pay up.
    Yabatech Rector Dr. Margaret Ladipo charged BURSCON members to exhibit “high sense of professionalism”.
    She said: “A situation where a bursar comes to office with his own private agenda of financial gain at all cost, cannot augur well for the system. Bursars should advise their principals properly, and support them to achieve the mandates of their institutions.”
    Yabatech Bursar Mr. Patrick Omolabi said the meeting provided BURSCON members an avenue to deliberate on government policies affecting their institutions financially.
    Former Yabatech Bursar Mr. Joseph Akeju, who gave the keynote address, advised bursars to be ethical and loyal to their principals, who are the accounting officers.

  • Bello harps on synergy among higher institutions

    Niger State Governor Abubakar Sani Bello has harped on collaborations among institutions of higher learning.

    According to him, the nation could adopt the strategic development of universities along areas of specialisation to enhance proper deployment of resources in establishing the best institutions that will serve specific needs of industry.

    Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 10th Federation of African Societies of Bio-chemistry and Molecular Biology in Minna, Bello advocated a synergy among universities at the state, federal and private.

    “We need to encourage synergy between private, state and federal universities in terms of focus, quality of products and services. We could adopt the strategic development of universities along areas of specialisation such that each institution can be identified with specific expertise while strengthening leakages with similar institutions either locally or internationally.”

    Bello called on African researchers to explore new initiatives in finding ways to solve the problems and improve the lives of people on the continent.

    “I challenge you to explore new initiatives towards advancing ways of converting research results and findings to solving problems in new ways, such that we can guarantee improvement of lives of our people on the continent.”

    Bello, who was represented by his Deputy, Alhaji Ahmed Ketso, disclosed that government is aware of scare resources as research capacity is pricey. He called on the government, civil societies and private bodies to play a more vital role in ameliorating the situation.

    “The resources for scientific research are becoming extremely scarce, personnel training and equipment for institutional research capacity building is pricey. However, we will be able to properly deploy resources in establishing the best institutions that will serve specific needs of industry, so as to reduce the production of unemployable graduates.”

     

  • First Class graduates to serve in higher institutions, says NYSC

    First Class graduates to serve in higher institutions, says NYSC

    Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Brig-Gen. Johnson Olawumi has said First Class graduates and their counterparts, who graduated with distinction from the polytechnics, will now be posted only to tertiary institutions for their primary assignment.

    He said universities have been banned from offering post-graduate admission to serving corps members, as doing so have been in violation of the NYSC Act.

    Brig-Gen. Johnson spoke in Kaduna yesterday at the opening ceremony of 2015 Batch ‘B’ Pre-Mobilisation Workshop.

    Addressing participants of the workshop, tagged, “ICT and NYSC Mobilization Process: Towards Eliminating Identified Challenges”, the NYSC boss emphasised that henceforth, “all First Class graduates will be posted to the universities for their primary assignments” and appealed to the Vice-Chancellors to retain them after their NYSC programme.

    NYSC’s Director of Corps Mobilisation Mr. Anthony Ani said the workshop would “look at the data entry used for the exercise for the Senate Approved list, the list of Approved Corps Producing Institutions and the list of accredited courses”.

    Brig-Gen. Olawumi, who enumerated his reform programmes aimed at improving service delivery and efficiency by the NYSC, stated thaat, if fully implemented, the scheme would add value to young Nigerian graduates.

    Kaduna State Governor Malam Nasir El-Rufai,  who was represented by  Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Youth and Sports, Alhaji Ibrahim Balarabe Musa, applauded the decision of NYSC to post First Class graduate corps members to tertiary institutions, adding that with the paucity of lecturers in such institutions, it was an encouraging decision of the NYSC to do so.

  • Oyo higher institutions begin indefinite strike

    Oyo higher institutions begin indefinite strike

    Academic staff unions in Oyo State tertiary institutions yesterday began an indefinite strike over unpaid salaries.

    They said if the government did not call them for negotiation in the next 14 days, they would continue the strike.

    The unions, under the aegis of the Joint Action Forum of Academic Staffs (JAFAS), after a meeting at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, said its members were last paid in February.

    It said the non-payment of salary was taking its toll on members as six of them had died in the last few days.

    JAFAS comprises members of the Association of Staff Unions of Polytechnics (ASUP) and College of Education Academic Staff Unions (COEASU) of The Polytechnic, Ibadan, Oke-Ogun Polytechnic, Saki, Ibarapa Polytechnic, Eruwa, College of Agriculture and Technology, Igbo-Ora and Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo.

    Kelani Ajadi, who spoke on behalf of the association, said: “We had embarked on a three-day warning strike and we gave the management of our various institutions a week  for negotiation.

    “But since the negotiation was not forthcoming, we decided to take our destinies in our hands.

    “We lost six of our members. They could not get enough funds to maintain themselves. Some are still in the hospitals.

    “Though we welcome the idea that the internally generated revenues of various institutions should be improved, this should not be attached to payment of salaries. Government should release the statutory fund due to these institutions as at when due.

    “The death of Olusola Ayeni of the Public Administration Department and Bayo Atanda from The Polytechnic, Ibadan and three others from Ibarapa Polytechnic could have been averted, if they had been paid as and when due.”

    Olawumi Muyiwa from Oke-Ogun State Polytechnic said since the struggle started, the government had not invited them.

    He said: “We cannot continue to watch until we are all dead. We have decided to take our destinies in our hands.”

    COEASU Chairman at the Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo, Kingsley Oke, said: “Mr. Ajibade Taofeek’s death was a sad one. There was no money even from the union’s purse to help him. Some are dying. Must we must die before we get what belongs to us? Some of us cannot pay our rent, school fees and other bills. We are appealing to everybody to assist us.”

  • Surviving first year in higher institutions

    Surviving first year in higher institutions

    The higher institution is a different world which cannot be compared with the secondary school.

    It’s an academic environment where your parents have limited access to monitor you. You mix with other students from different family backgrounds, religious beliefs and orientation.

    In real terms, one is faced with the first pressure of life and only the fittest survives because a lot will depend on the ability to cope with the new reality of life.

    As a ‘fresher’ (a newly admitted student), it will take some time to adapt to the new academic system. It is a responsibility that you will have to live up to because education is one of the necessary requirements for success in life.

    The institutions have their rules and regulations which you will have to obey. You will be exposed to certain behaviours and attitudes by some students and it takes somebody from a good family background to identify the good students and emulate them.

    You will have to adjust to another kind of lecture hours which is different from that of the secondary school. Life in the higher institutions is a journey that requires from you a sacrifice (your time and energy), focus, and commitment.

    It is advisable that you should move with the right friends. Friends will make you succeed and they can make you fail as well, so the choice is yours not your parents’ or your lecturers’.

    Ensure that you attend classes always and do not depend wholly on recommended text books. Though you must read them, but the lecturer’s explanation gives you a better understanding of the text books. Make sure you read ahead; get the course outline so that you will know the next topic to be treated.

    Find materials that will be useful to you. Take seriously your tests and an assignment which is sometimes 30% of your mark and the exam is 70% depending on your institutions’ policy.

    Make use of the library on a regular basis. Reading is not just enough but understanding what you’ve read. You should also have your own timetable and follow it at all time. Don’t read alone, read with your friends, and share ideas to expand your scope on what you already know. You will be amazed when others share their own understanding with you.

    A secret that you should get used to is that you should not dislike any of your lecturers. Your attitude towards them matters a lot. Have the right respectable attitude towards them.

    For the female students, you should not grant any lecturer unethical requests. Do not depend on their promises. Maintain your stand and don’t be used.

    Cultism in our higher institutions has led to the untimely death of some students. Others have become criminals through their involvement in the cult groups.

    You don’t need to be a member of any cult group to succeed in your academic pursuits. It is your character and behaviour that can attract or repel them. If you get involved in cult activities and you are caught, you might be rusticated and it will be difficult for you to get into another institution. Stay focused!