Rescue plan for university system: A governance perspective

Recently , a very disturbing message came on one of my WhatsApp platforms. It was a book review of a book on the steady and systemic decline of the Nigerian University system. The reviewer gave the title: A Nation’s Slide into Educational Disarmament. He pointed out that if an enemy had done to Nigeria what our own leaders had done to the country’s educational system in the last six decades we should be ready to go to war with such enemies. It is unflattering that all of our leaders across the political, administrative, economic and even the academia landscapes have done to our own educational system generally and to the university in particular.

The author traced the glorious days of the Nigerian university system in which foreign scholars, faculty and students came to learn at our centres of learning on the basis of bilateral or multilateral exchanges. Domestically, academics contested the political and economic space even with the succession of civil and military juntas on the direction of the country politically or economically and even contested the draconian disciplinary measures imposed on lecturers or professors that the political leaders – civil or military – thought had crossed their lines. The book documented how the Nigerian universities have practically fallen off the global ranking scale among the universities of the world. The four global ranking systems use six performance indicators: teaching (learning environment), research, citations, international outlook, industrial income, publications. In 2005 no Nigerian university made it to the first 500 universities in the whole world, except for four from the Republic of South Africa. By 2023 no Nigerian university made it to the first 1000 universities in the world but RSA had 8! University of Ibadan the first of them from our country was in the 1138th position.

How did we get here? We can list the forces that contributed to this slide to systemic decline under the following headings:
Loss of conception of the university as a centre of excellence and of essential autonomy; military humiliation and centralisation; intergovernmental and intersectoral issues and roles of non-governmental agencies; competition and excellence—-teaching, research and consulting for innovative development and infrastructure, curriculum and human resource development issues.

Education is the perfect example of a public good or service, as it illustrates the need for a totally different approach to managing the public services in Nigeria. Instead of a centralised approach what is needed is a more multi-centred and multi-layered management with maximum opportunities for autonomous interactions among several actors. And this is because education is both a necessary public good with great opportunities for private inputs that have not really been utilised, generally but especially at the apex levels—at the university.

Education is also a public service through which a society seeks to self-correct the present generation while nurturing and preparing the next generation. It is thus a theatre for cultural dialogue and dynamics and cannot be taken for granted. Universities as the apex of this educational pyramid are impacted by its own actions or in-actions but also by other actors within the educational pyramid from the pre- and basic elementary levels to the secondary and technical elements within that pyramid.

Universities drive a nation’s educational pyramid through its high quality teaching and research using the most capable in that society. This makes it inevitably elitist with total commitment to the scientific enquiry. Scientific endeavour thrives through freedom of expression and also of access to resources to break new grounds in diverse disciplines.

The university has the universe as its backdrop and must be able to reach out to any and all aspects of that universe beyond national, gender, racial etc confines. Universities have therefore linked excellence and autonomy as essential elements of their culture. The Nigerian university was built on these principles originally and became a veritable national industry that energised the rest of the educational system through constant improvement of the whole of the educational pyramid.

It produced teachers, instructors for all the other levels—secondary, elementary while at the same time it attracted international acclaim and attracted the best quality students and faculty from within Nigeria, other African countries. It was not uncommon for many departments to have scholars from diverse nationalities.

I had the good fortune in my final year to have been taught American Geography by a Nigerian professor at the University of Ibadan while Nigerian Geography was taught by a visiting professor from the University of London. My head of department happened to be the President of the International Geographical Union. Before that in my higher school days at Igbobi College, African and European History was taught by a European lady while my uncle taught us Geography.

The decay set in when civilian politicians corrupted the political system as they sought to amass absolute power and silence or imprison any opposition to their rule. It got much worsened under the military. Many of the latter had very little education or love for education while they occupied positions of ultimate power. They humiliated the universities as institutions and also the individuals associated with the educational system generally. Even secondary school principals were disgraced if they sought to discipline their pupils as they used to.

Unfortunately, those who were in academics in the universities themselves compromised the core values of the academia. Many of them scrambled for positions as Vice Chancellors or for other plum appointments in government.

But one thing that totally destroyed the system was the idea of the federal government seeking to create a university for every state in the federation. Subsequently, each of the increasing number of states (from four to 36 under military rule) to create politically motivated universities and tertiary educational institutions. Yet those same agencies of state argued that they had no resources to maintain those that were already created! The result was severe under-funding for the core functions of these educational institutions nor for the basic infrastructures, curriculum development that would have led to further improvements etc.

The other idea that further killed the Nigerian university system was the centralisation of policies, admissions etc for all these educational centres of learning. JAMB was created not to ensure that high standards were kept by all these institutions but to police and enforce federal character that meant that students from some parts of the country could enter the university with only 130 marks at the JAMB exam when the cut off mark for the same discipline for other states stood at 280-300!

In the meantime, parents responded to the crisis in the Nigerian higher educational system by sending their children to foreign universities at great cost or to private universities that were also very expensive within the country. The first represents a total loss to the country’s educational industry whereas the latter can yet be helped to become a part of our national strategy of salvaging education and especially university education. Next is the way forward.

The Federal Government should declare a national emergency on education generally and especially on the university system. Action points at the federal level include: firstly, the federal government should seek to mobilise additional resources to support the education system generally. Education budget was 7.9 per cent of the total 2024 budget (with 11.5 per cent going for basic education while 32 per cent was for tertiary education).

This was slightly higher than for previous years but this is still a far cry from the UNESCO’s global mandate recommendation of 15-20 per cent. Such increased funding should go into run down infrastructures and human resources development of our universities—for the faculty, administration and the studentship. Secondly, the federal government should focus on policy development for all universities and to rationalise her own existing universities such that the few universities that she would own would become centres of excellence in specific areas—rather than general universities.

Thirdly, the federal government, working with the key stakeholders —states, private, nongovernmental and faith bodies —should also do much more to restore confidence in the system by upgrading the curriculum of our educational institutions generally but of the universities in particular, so that our graduates would be able relate easily to a world that is growing at the speed of light in advancements in knowledge and its diverse applications in technology, diverse social and core sciences and the arts.

In this way, our universities would have a fighting chance to be restored to their old glory even as they add value to their societies and the world at large. The essence of a university is problem solving. Our universities should become a part of the solution to our many problems in Nigeria and the world rather than major contributors to these problems.
Olowu is a former Professor of Public Administration and Policy, Amsterdam and Lagos.