Higher education: More varsities or better quality?

University education in Nigeria, at least in the public sector, is in a dysfunctional state. Its human capital is in disarray, and physical infrastructure is in decay. Academic standards and infrastructure are eroded daily, with thousands of disillusioned students seeking exit. Their lecturers are frustrated in the face of poor motivation and ramshackle facilities. As the rot deepens, so does the Federal Government’s appetite for establishing new universities sweetens. In this piece, IYABO LAWAL examines the Nigerian government’s gold rush for new public universities and implications.

Dateline was December. Rendezvous was the Nigerian Senate. The erstwhile acting Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC) Chris Maiyaki, was hardly smiling. His deadpan audience wanted to hear him out.

“There are 275 universities, both public and private, available for over two million prospective students seeking admission yearly. The implication is that on a yearly basis, only 500,000 to 700,000 students are admitted, leaving about 1.3 million frustrated and unable to pursue university education,”Maiyaki began.

It was during a public hearing organised by the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions, where stakeholders supported the proposed establishment of the Federal University, Okigwe, in Imo. Not a few will be forgiven if they conclude that establishing Federal Government-owned universities has become federal lawmakers’ constituency “pastime project.”

With his words weighing an ounce of gold, the NUC boss added, “Nigeria, with a population of 200 million, has only 275 universities. In contrast, Indonesia, which has a similar population, boasts about 2,000 universities, while countries like Russia, Brazil, and India have hundreds of thousands of higher institutions.”

The Senate and the NUC are determined to establish more universities, according to them, to address the rising demand for university education. Speaking at the hearing, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund, Senator MuntariDandutse, and the sponsor of the Federal University Okigwe Bill, Senator Patrick Ndubueze, underscored the urgent need for more universities in Nigeria.

However, Maiyaki pointed out the dire shortfall in Nigeria’s higher education infrastructure. To address the shortfall, the NUC chief stated that the commission would expand regulatory frameworks and enhance capacity building to support the establishment of additional universities. Dandutse lent his voice by saying that the proposed Federal University, Okigwe, will “significantly improve access to university education for Nigerians, particularly those in Imo state, while contributing to national educational development.”

Apparently, the appetite for university education in Nigeria is huge. However, the existing infrastructure, policies, and political realities are becoming obstacles for hundreds of thousands of the country’s youth. Africa is the world’s youngest continent, with 60 per cent of its population under 25. The UN projects that Africa’s youth population,already the largest in the world,will double to over 830 million by 2050.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) reports that by the same year, the continent’s working-age population (15 to 64 years old) will rise from 849 million in 2024 to 1.56 billion, accounting for 85 per cent of the global workforce increase. Nigeria’s population under 18 years old is 50.4 per cent. Nigeria is the 16th country with the youngest population in the world. Many of them are itching to enter the university. Some are even desperate to take the bait of admission into fake universities littered across West Africa.

A check of the top 20 countries with the highest number of universities list India, with 8,574 universities, as number one. Others are China (3,085); United States (3,180); Brazil (2,354); Russia (1,617 universities); Japan (1,244); Mexico (1,139); Indonesia (1,074 though some sources list it as (3,277); South Korea (969); Germany (945); France (854); United Kingdom (742); Italy (729); Spain (684); Poland (674); Canada (646); Turkey (623); Australia (584); South Africa (563); and Argentina (546).

In Nigeria, as of December 21, 2024, as shown on the NUC website, there are 63 federal universities, 63 state universities, and 148 private universities. The number will potentially reach 110 as a bill to establish 47 new public universities has scaled through a second reading.
Between 2020 and 2024, at least 20 new federal universities were created. One of them is the Federal University of Transportation, Daura, with a total of 478 students in its inaugural cohort, which was matriculated during a ceremony held recently. This number represents the students admitted across 14 academic programmes for the 2023/2024 academic session.

The university received over 1,250 applications, but the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) allocated a quota of 500 students, which was later increased by 10 per cent to accommodate the admitted students.

Other newly-established institutions are the University of Maritime Studies, Oron (2024); Adeyemi Federal University of Education, Ondo (2023); Federal University of Education, Kano (2023); AlvanIkoku Federal University of Education, Owerri, Imo (2023); Federal University of Education, Zaria, Kaduna (2023); Federal University of Agriculture, Mubi (2023); Federal University of Health Sciences, Katsina (2023); Federal University of Health Sciences Kwale, Delta (2023); Federal University of Agriculture Bassam-Biri, Bayelsa (2023); National University of Science and Technology, Abuja (2023); African Aviation and Aerospace University (2023); Admiralty University Ibusa, Delta (2023); and David NwezeUmahi Federal University of Medical Sciences (2022), among others.

Although the Federal Government owns 63 universities, with a potential increase to 110, the country has not been able to meet the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) standard of 26 per cent budgetary allocation for the funding of education. The highest allocation so far recorded was eight per cent, yet 60 per cent of that funding for universities goes into recurrent expenditure.

In its wisdom, to complement the funding, the Federal Government’s agencies, such as the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), intervened in infrastructural development in the institutions. The reality remains that funding has not been adequate for Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.

According to the World Bank, higher institutions in sub-Saharan African countries like Nigeria face the formidable policy challenge of balancing the need to raise educational quality with increasing social demand for access.

It added that the task of funding these institutions will become increasingly difficult in the years ahead; as the youth population continues to grow, each country will have to devise a financing approach to higher education development that enables it meet the challenge.

It has been stressed that education and work in sub-Saharan Africa will determine the livelihoods of nearly a billion people, driving growth and development in generations to come, with experts reasoning that the solution to “Africa’s education has to be scalable in order to address the problem awaiting the continent in 2050 as revealed” by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs World population prospect report that the continent would have the fastest growing workforce and school-age children by 2050.

The prospect is bleak as governments in the region cannot meet their citizens’ extensive and increasing educational needs, given significant funding gaps.

The region represents only four per cent ($110.7 billion) of the global education investment ($2.5 trillion), significantly below its 13.5 per cent share of the global population or its 22 per cent share of the global population of children under the age of 15.

The education financing gap in sub-Saharan Africa stands at a staggering $0.8 trillion to $1 trillion at the primary level, and $255 billion at the secondary and post-secondary levels.

In 2016, education got 7.9 per cent of Nigeria’s budget. This was reduced to 6.1 per cent in 2017 before it was increased to 7.1 per cent in 2018. Allocation to the sector nosedived to 6.5 per cent in 2020, while it got 5.7 and 5.4 per cent in 2021 and 2022, respectively. In 2023, it got 8.2 per cent, while in 2024, it got 6.39 per cent. Amid poor capacity to attract education grants, these paltry allocations are expected to cater for 63 federal universities, 40 federal polytechnics, 27 federal colleges of education, and 104 unity colleges.

The same story of poor educational budgetary allocation is applicable in most states. Data from the NUC showed that the over 200 universities in the country only have about 35 per cent of the required number of teachers for effective teaching and learning.

Every year, the Times Higher Education (THE) releases its ranking of the best universities in the world. The World University Rankings stand as premier global benchmarks, evaluating research-intensive universities across key pillars: teaching, research environment, research quality, knowledge transfer, and international outlook. The evaluation exercise assessed the institutions’ core missions of teaching, research, and community service.

With a troubled education system bedevilled by incessant strike actions, obsolete library materials, ill-equipped laboratories, dilapidated structures and a dearth of qualified teachers, stakeholders noted that producing globally competitive graduates may be a mirage.
Nigerian universities have not fared well in global ranking over the years, largely because they do not have what it takes to compete with their foreign counterparts in terms of funding, infrastructure, manpower, and ability to attract international students. Lecturers are poorly remunerated and often overworked.

In May this year, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) showed that it is not impressed with the rapid proliferation of universities.

National President of the union, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, insisted that the act establishing the ‘NUC should be amended to make it more potent in arresting excessive establishment of universities in Nigeria. Osodeke lamented that the proliferation is hurting TETFund’s monies for new universities.

“What we need are universities that are adequately empowered to address the challenges confronting Nigeria and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their peers elsewhere in the world, not mushroom-glorified high schools,” Osodeke said.

In Nigeria, the process of setting up federal universities and licensing them involves several steps and stakeholders, including proposal and conceptualisation (the Federal Government, through the Ministry of Education, identifies the need for a new university and conceptualises the proposal); presidential approval (the president approves the proposal and forwards it to the National Assembly for legislative action); National Assembly approval (the National Assembly passes a bill establishing the university, which is then signed into law by the president); gazetting (the new university is gazetted, and its establishment is officially published); licensing and accreditation (the NUC, the regulatory body for universities in Nigeria conducts a resource verification exercise to ensure the university has the necessary resources, including academic staff, facilities, and equipment; accredits the university’s academic programmes to ensure they meet the minimum standards; then issues a licence to the university, and authorising it to operate.

“One of the major problems facing tertiary institution is the establishment of universities without template for funding. The method of appointment and recruitment into state-owned universities by the government has also been a problem,” Osodeke said.

Further, to redress the anomaly of the arbitrary creation of universities, Chief Afe Babalola, the founder of the Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, suggested that the NUC should play a more visible role before the establishment of universities by the federal and state governments.

“I should not be mistaken as saying that the NUC should only be more stringent in its accreditation of the courses offered by these government-sponsored universities,” Babalola reasoned. “What I advocate is increased direct involvement of the NUC before any state government or even the Federal Government takes a decision as to whether a new university should be allowed to come into existence or not. A constitutional amendment is necessary to subject the establishment of any university by federal and state government to approval by NUC.”

Who will bell the cat?
Rather than whine and go on strike, universities abroad have become ingenious by developing business models and partnered non-profit and profit-making organisations to keep doing what they know how to do best. One of the X-factors of overseas universities is increased interconnectivity. For example, Georgetown is one of several United States universities with campuses in Qatar, and Yale University recently opened a branch in Singapore in partnership with the National University of Singapore.

Foreign universities’ infrastructures are designed to make learning fun and inspiring to students; everything is designed with learning outcomes in mind. Maintenance is key to sustaining these beautiful, aesthetically modelled buildings: from the classrooms to the library, the labs to the hostels, and the playground to the sceneries. All these make learning, teaching, innovation and excellence possible. Unfortunately, adequate infrastructure is a mirage in Nigeria.