‘We must strengthen existing universities’ — FG opposes n’assembly’s push for 200 more

The federal government has opposed plans by the national assembly to pass bills for the creation of nearly 200 new universities in the country.

Speaking in Abuja on Thursday during the ministerial press briefing, Tunji Alausa, the minister of education, said about 200 bills are at the national assembly seeking to create new universities, noting that the nation’s education system is becoming overwhelmed.

The minister said strengthening the capacities of the existing universities is more important than establishing new ones.

“They are passing a lot of bills. Today, I can tell you that there are almost 200 bills in the national assembly. We can’t continue like this. Even though we have a lot of them, the capacity for a university to admit is not there,” he said.

“What we need to do now is to rebuild the capacities so that we can offer more viable courses to our citizens.

“We need to stop this from happening. There is so much pressure on the president. We have to, at least, be sensitive to it as well.

“I understand the sentiment of our legislators. They want to show that they are working. We know they are working. But then, we have enough assets; we have enough opportunities out there for students to go to universities.

“What we now need to do is to begin to mobilise more resources to develop infrastructures, build engineering workshops, build laboratories in these universities, and recruit international standard teachers so that we can begin to get these universities to develop and deliver high quality education that will be known for as a country.

“Today, if you care to know, we have 64 federal universities, 67 state universities, and 147 private universities.

“If you look at the entire enrollment together, the private universities account for just 7.5 percent of total undergraduate enrollment.

“I will tell you the meaning of the number. The total number of undergraduate enrollments today is just about 875,000, which is, at least, fairly low.

“We have universities with less than 1,000 undergraduate students, and there is this intense demand for more universities to be opened. We have to stop that.”

Nigeria currently has 278 universities, 64 of which are federal, 67 state, and 147 private.

For now, the government has put a temporary stop to the process of registering new private universities.