Babel of citadels

BY TUNDE OLUSUNLE

Martins Oloja’s typically detailed and characteristically incisive piece in his Inside Stuff column in The Guardian on Sunday of June 27, 2021, practically took out from my mouth, an issue that has agitated my mind in recent weeks and months. Titled Nigeria Needs Better, Not More Universities, Oloja interrogates the exponential expansion of universities, public and private, and wonders why the government is licensing more and more private universities and building new ones. He contended that existing institutions could be improved upon via adequate funding and the provision of infrastructure.

Indeed, on a social media platform to which Oloja and I belong, a very eminent and distinguished administrator and statesman commented on the said piece by remarking that there are 1800 universities in The Philippines for 105 million people. He explained further that most of the universities in the Philippines, which he cited as an example, do not require vast acreages of land as we have in Nigeria because they are specialised institutions.

I began to take a very keen interest in the unwholesome proliferation of universities under the incumbent administration when in 2018, the Nigerian Army, then under the leadership of Tukur Yusuf Buratai, a lieutenant general, established a university in the North East of the country. The institution, named the Nigerian Army University, NAU,  is sited in Biu, Borno State, Buratai’s home state. With an existing Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA established almost 60 years ago and domiciled in Kaduna, the North of the country, you are compelled to dissect the basis for this rather wasteful duplication.

For the avoidance of doubt, the NDA, in 1985, began to offer five-year undergraduate degree programmes to military officers in training. The institution has blossomed into one that offers masters and doctorate degrees for both military and civilian students. The NDA has long earned international recognition, such that it attracts international students predominantly from African countries to its programmes.

The founding justification for the NAU remains hazy at its very best. It has been interpreted to mean Buratai’s dividend of democracy for his people. The university supposedly “focuses on research and technological innovation in the defence sector, emphasising local challenges in asymmetrical warfare in Nigeria, Africa and the world at large,” whatever that means.

If the army and the defence sector in general desire education in this area of innovation and technology, why wouldn’t it take full advantage of the preexisting defence academy and the Defence Industries Corporation, DICON, also located in Kaduna? Why will a brand new institution continue to draw from the shrinking resources available to the government to cater to its constituents?

As though in competition for honours for the most unimaginative innovations, the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Chibuike, in 2019, sets up a Federal University of Transportation in Daura, the hometown of President Muhammadu Buhari. The project sits on over 400 hectares of land and and “will focus on research and development of human capital for the country’s transport sector.” At the groundbreaking ceremony of the proposed university on December 2, 2019, Buhari noted that it is the first of its kind in Africa “and will provide technical skills, enhance managerial capacity, and pave the way for innovation in Nigeria’s transport system.”

In one breath, the project has been described as a gift to Nigeria and part of Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, by the China Civil Engineering and Construction Corporation, CCECC, builders of the ongoing rail network in the country. In another breath, the federal government is said to have approved the sum of $50million (N18 billion dollars) for the project. The Transportation University will also have primary and secondary schools to cater for the educational needs of children of staff of the institution. Amaechi has also hinted that a similar project will be established in Rivers State in the foreseeable future.

The last time I checked, two Nigerian universities, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, LAUTECH,  Ogbomoso, Oyo State and Lagos State University, LASU, Lagos, offer degree-awarding programmes in transport management technology. There is also a Nigeria Maritime University, NMU, located in Okerenkoko, Gbaramatu, Delta State. While LAUTECH is a 31-year-old institution, LASU has been in existence for nearly four decades.

The NMU, on the other hand, was initiated by the Buhari administration and began offering degree courses in the 2017/2018 academic session. There is, of course, a federal government-owned Maritime Academy of Nigeria, MAN, in Oron, Akwa Ibom State, which enjoys parity with federal polytechnics and was established in 1979. Couldn’t the government have boosted the carrying capacity, personnel quality and physical infrastructure of some of these institutions without expending the nation’s debilitated resources on new universities?

Away from the nation’s coastal states and communities, the Nigerian Navy has announced plans to establish a “Desert Warfare Institute” in Kano. A fortnight ago, a press report on the subject said the Chief of Naval Staff, CNS, Rear Admiral Awwal Zubairu Gambo, desires the “presence and visibility of the Nigerian Navy in Kano State.” Gambo, by the way, hails from Kano State and follows the footsteps of Buratai, his senior colleague who gifted Borno State with a university for the army.

There was, of course, the rash approval by the federal government last February of 20 new private universities, which escalated the number of privately owned universities to 99, just one institution, short of the one century mark. Even as some of these tertiary institutions supposedly strive to meet the minimum standards set by National Universities Commission, NUC, some of them are no better than the “one building,” suspect quality universities in some neighbouring countries, which the NUC perennially admonishes Nigerians about.

The population of state-owned universities, those established by the various state governments and the federal government, continues to grow. Indeed, the total number of such institutions runs neck to neck, with the aggregate of privately owned universities, when we consider recently approved federal government-owned “specialised universities” and some newly licensed state-owned institutions. Carefully computed, there may be close to 200 universities in Nigeria today.

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State announced the creation of three new universities, by his administration, in addition to the long-existing Delta State University, DELSU, in Abraka, a few months ago. A new Delta State University, Agbor; Dennis Osadebey University, Asaba and Delta State University of Science and Technology, Ozoro, were licensed by the NUC in March. The new universities will grow out of existing physical structures in the College of Education, Agbor; Delta State Polytechnic, Ozoro and the Anwai campus of DELSU.

Okowa rationalised the establishment of the new universities within the context of the inability of enthusiastic youths seeking university education in existing state and federal universities to secure placements. His words: “In the JAMB report of 2018, a total of 80,131 Deltans, representing 4.85 percent of total applicants, sat for the board’s university entrance examination.

However, the Delta state helmsman noted that only a fraction of candidates who passed the qualifying examinations could be admitted. Also, for the 2019/2020 academic session, 25,896 candidates from Delta State chose Delta State University as their first choice. Out of this number, 22,358 qualified, but only 4,854 candidates could be admitted.” The governor opined that the state government could not continue to look the other way when its youths are frustrated and depressed by the inability to pursue their educational dreams, no thanks to inadequate slots in various universities.

Delta state ranks amongst the top five most affluent states in the country regarding fiscal accruals from the federal government; its share of the 13% derivation funds for oil production states, indeed, its internally generated revenue, IGR. It is one of the very few states in Nigeria with two functional airports in Warri and Asaba, respectively, a measure of socioeconomic activity in the state, especially in the oil and gas sector. While it may fund and sustain many universities, can the same be said of a state like Kogi?

Here is a state that has made heavy metal of its ability to discharge the simplest of statutory obligations to its citizens, paying workers’ salaries and pensions. The incumbent administration has gained national notoriety for pioneering an uncanny and duplicitous “payment in percentages” of workers’ emoluments. There have been reports of suicides and sudden deaths by public servants in this state regarding despair and depression occasioned by lack, hunger and insolvency. But only recently, the state House of Assembly approved an executive request to establish a new university. The NUC has since issued the state government a licence for what is to be known as a Confluence State University of Science and Technology, CSUST.

The institution is to be sited in the Central Senatorial Zone in Kogi State, where the state’s incumbent governor comes from. It will operate from the College of Mines and Metallurgy of the Kogi State Polytechnic, which is located in Osara, in Kogi Central.

Kogi State, by the way, has an existing 20-year-old university. It was established by the visionary and far-sighted pioneer, democratically elected governor of the state, the late Abubakar Audu. Christened after Audu for his pathfinding endeavours, and known as “Prince Abubakar Audu University,” PAAU, the institution can do with massive upgrades in personnel and infrastructure to bring it to parity with very successful state-owned universities like LASU; Ambrose Alli University, AAU, Ekpoma; Adetunji Ajasin University, Akungba, Ondo State and the Abia State University, ABSU, Uturu, among others.

This year, the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria passed a bill to establish a National Steel University, NSU, to be sited in Ajaokuta, home of perhaps the largest, but unfortunately moribund steel complex, in Africa. Ajaokuta, by the way, is also in Kogi’s Central Senatorial Zone, host of the fledgling CSUST. And so, we are about to have two universities with the same vision and mission statement within the same catchment area in Kogi State.

Meanwhile, my people in Kogi West Senatorial Zone, arguably home of the largest pool of professors and intellectuals per square meter, in Nigeria are clamouring, deservedly and correctly, for the upgrading of the College of Agriculture in Kabba into a full-fledged university. At its establishment over 50 years ago, the college was affiliated to the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria and has continued to operate as an appendage of the premier university in the North of the country.

Several submissions have been made both by socio-cultural bodies and succeeding parliamentarians from the zone about this imperative need of our people. Indeed, with agriculture as the mainstay of the local economy of the seven local government areas in Kogi West, a University of Agriculture can only enhance the nation’s capacity towards the attainment of the goal of food security. It will equally help in getting our youngsters “back to land,” in a dispensation where youths hang around politicians awaiting crumbs and handouts from their tables and are easily procured to serve the selfish, often mortally risky ends of their local principals.

While it is convenient for the government to approve of the establishment of universities and more universities mainly for political expediency, the same government has lost sight of the daily skyrocketing numbers of unemployed graduates in a rapidly constricting economy. Graduates from the universities, federal, state and privately owned, are periodically joined by the spilling army of graduate job seekers from federal, state and privately owned polytechnics and colleges of education. The youngsters savour momentary relief during the one year mandatory National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, before confronting the inclement temperament of the elements on the streets, in their relentless quest for sustainable engagement.

The federal government continues to peddle figures of Nigerian youths purportedly taken out the unemployment market, even as the numbers continue to multiply in leaps and bounds. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, negate this assumption while highlighting the worrying reality on the ground. The fourth-quarter report of the NBS for 2020 puts the unemployment figures at a minimum 33.3%, or about 25 million people. It would be more because such figures are usually presumptuous. Unfortunately, the government has not liberalised the economic space enough to absorb more and more Nigerians.

A babel of citadels of learning is not what Nigeria needs now. Not at all. The nation needs to consolidate its fiscal and human capital to grow youths and youngsters who possess the requisite knowledge, intuition, and skills to contribute meaningfully and productively to the growth and development of a rapidly changing national and global socioeconomy. The space for expansion is not the challenge of most state-owned universities, where pioneers have long procured vast, almost infinite stretches of hectarage. The University of Ilorin, for instance, straddles about four local government areas contiguous to its present location. The Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, was going to partner with some Brazilian investors a few years back to cultivate cassava and other crops, adding a few billions of naira to the IGR of the institution. Space, therefore, is not an issue.

We should be concerned as a nation, for instance, about why foreign artisans dominate construction sites across the country. Togolese, Beninois and Ghanaians have become first choice craftsmen in painting, plaster-of-paris decor and tiling. Yes, we have them here, but how do we help them to up the ante of their trades? Why do Nigerian-trained medical personnel excel in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa and elsewhere? Have we upgraded our teaching, learning, and practice facilities to the level where the urge to seek greener pastures outside our shores becomes less and less compulsive for our medical professionals?

We must grow relevant, requisite and appropriate human capital who will be meaningfully and sustainably engaged in

operating the wheels of our domestic economy, given the dynamics of the global village. This is achievable, not by dissipation of energies and resources,

but by the consolidation of aggregate capital, human and material. We need to get interested in growing entrepreneurs in today’s world of limitless prospects of information technology.

We must find ways of making agriculture, for instance, very attractive to our youths, beyond the punitive “live your life in the sun” fallacy that has been ingrained into their thinking. How has agriculture become such a prosperous and booming preoccupation elsewhere globally, where the whole aircraft are chartered to deliver day-fresh farm produce to designated destinations across the world? Whatever happened to the model experimented about 20 years ago by the Zimbabwean farmers who lived and farmed in northern Kwara state, under the administration of Bukola Saraki? Agriculture is the present; it is the future with its infinite downstream potentials and possibilities.

Once upon a time, our economy was so robust, our exchange rate so solid, that our universities attracted global icons in virtually every sphere of education. They came from all over the USA, the UK, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Cameroon, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo DRC, Sierra Leone, and so on. They added new vistas to scholarship and fresh perspectives to learning. We need to grow top-flight human capacity across the board in academia in substantial numbers and take pride in our excess human resource engagement in other climes. There, they not only hoist the national flag with pride and conviction, they equally participate actively in giving back to their country of birth. We have to get there.

Tunde Olusunle, PhD, is a poet, journalist and scholar