FEATURE ARTICLE

Temple Chima UbochiSaturday, May 30, 2009
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THE STATE OF THE NATION: ROT IN THE EDUCATION SECTOR (4)

Continued from Part 3

If you hire mediocre, they will hire mediocre people (Tom Murphy)
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. (Jacob Bronowski)
One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money. (Indira Gandhi)
Money and Corruption Are ruining the land Crooked politicians Betray the working man, Pocketing the profits And treating us like sheep, And we're tired of hearing promises That we know they'll never keep. (Ray Davies)
The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended between its position in the eternal world, with all its corruption and evils and cruelties, and the splendid world of our imagination. (Richard Hofstadter)


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pfront, I must crave for your patience as I will try to buttress my points with few facts, making this piece a long one.

The President at the opening of a three-day Commonwealth of Learning (COL) forum on "A decade of Open and Distance Learning in the Commonwealth: Achievements and Challenges." expressed concern about the poor rating of the nation's educational system and called for urgent steps to redress the situation. He called for the expansion of access to higher institutions of learning to achieve the desired objective. This writer wonders who the president is calling upon “to expand the access to higher institutions of learning to achieve the desired objective”. This writer also wonders who the president is calling upon to redress the poor rating of the nation’s educational system. This is the problem with Nigeria: Instead of the president to show leadership here by taking up the initiative and ordering the minister of education to take up the task and from there the order will get to permanent secretary in the minister till the person who will do the implementation, he is calling on other people to do his job for him. The president is supposed to reserve the oversight function for himself as to be sure that his order is carried out. This writer has always said that lack of leadership and corruption are Nigeria’s major twin problems and they are intertwined. Corruption breeds lack of leadership and lack of leadership leads to corruption. Whenever Nigeria will be able to sort itself out of these two problems, then every other thing will change for the better. The government at the federal, state and local government levels, the federal and states offices, the Army, Navy, Airforce, Police, Customs, Immigration, the universities etc lack the requisite leadership but are being drowned in the waters of corruption. We learnt that the whopping sum of over £210 billion has been looted in the country since 1960, with the late General Sani Abacha looting about $4 billion in four years. An expert from United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) reiterated that the impact of looting was enormous, as it drained currency reserves, reduced tax base, harmed competition, undermined free trade and increased poverty levels. This £210 billion (about $400 billion) have been wasted through corruption, mismanagement, greed, incompetence etc and that amount, this writer learnt, when placed in $1 bill one after the other upward will get to the moon 75 times.

This writer thinks that Yar’Adua forgets that he is the president and that it is how he wants the country and its facets to be, so will things be. Late last years, the professors at the University of Ibadan were furious and blamed the government for most of the institution’s woes as they reacted to Yar’Adua’s suggestion that the university should shed the toga of being a local champion for a global garb. Yar'Adua stirred the hornet's nest at the University of Ibadan when he declared that the institution was just a local champion that refused to play the research game at the global level. The President, during the convocation of the university, expressed regret that in spite of its age, the nation's premier university was not rated as one of the best 200 universities in the world. He, therefore, challenged the dons at the institution to wake up from their research and academic slumber and put the name of the university on the world educational map.

But dons and students of the university did not take the President's criticism lightly and they fought back. They believe the President has not only lost touch with reality but oblivious of happenings at the institution. A professor of veterinary medicine, Bankole Oke said: The President's comment is unfortunate; I think it came as a result of ignorance. However, I find it easy to forgive him because I'm sure someone wrote that speech for him. But on a second thought, I think it is not right for leaders not to cross-check facts in speeches written for them before they go to town with such. Oke, said it was not easy to exonerate the President because his comments were unfair, not just on UI, but on the nation's university system. He alleged that government, which owns the university, had not been fair to the institution in terms of funding and provision of facilities that could enhance teaching, learning and research. In Oke´s words: “Look, there has never been a year that government releases the exact amount presented to it in our annual budget. The funds often released are never enough for overhead cost, let alone capital projects. Electricity supply is epileptic and in fact some of us (dons, researchers and scientists) have to go abroad to conduct research”.

A Professor of soil science, John Ajayi, disclosed that inadequate power supply was the bane of the nation's academic development. Ajayi, who has been in the university for 32 years, said decaying infrastructure, obsolete equipment, inadequate funding, ill-motivated staff, increased students population were responsible for the trend. He said, "I've been in this university for 32 years. I can say that this is the worst year I have experienced in terms of power generation. For instance, the Faculty of Science did not have electricity supply for close to three months this year. Even for this three-day programme (exhibition marking UI at 60), we have to use generator all through and we all know that without energy supply, little or nothing can be done scientifically. So, government should live up to its responsibility. "

Dr. Kehinde Kester, who teaches in the Faculty of Education said, "If they had ranked presidents or governments in the world, which position will he (Yar'Adua) or the Nigerian government be? I don't need to answer that question, all of us know. But singling out the university system for non-performance is an admission of failure on the part of the government, because a university system cannot be greater than the quality of funding it receives and the quality of leadership in a country. But with what you have seen here, you too can see that we are not just here doing nothing like those who seek power to enrich themselves."

Yar’Adua wants the universities to wrought miracles while he has been unable to do his own part. He has been unable to tackle the power problem, infact; he has blamed a cartel as being behind the power mess Nigeria is in because the so called mafia is sabotaging all efforts to put the power sector in order. Think of it: A president being incapable to deal with saboteurs sabotaging against the success of his regime, rather, sounding defeated in the face of a mafia or oligopoly working against one of his agendas. The President should know that it takes more than the saying that he “can hardly sleep again because of the power situation” to put the sector in order. This writer wonders how Yar’Adua expects the universities to excel without constant power supply. Yar’Adua has promised to make sure that 6,000 megawatts are generated by the year’s end, but, workers in the power sector have expressed reservation over the federal government's plan to generate that quantity of electricity by December this year. Through the Secretary-General of National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), Mr. Joe Ajaero, the workers said recently in Enugu that the situation on ground did not make the attainment of the goal realistic.

Yar’Adua should know that without electricity, the universities will be handicapped and might spend the meagre resources at their disposal in generating power, meaning that research and development will then be short-changed. Just an instance: The University of Ibadan is tackling the outages with solar energy and bio-fuel and Yar’Adua is not commending them for that. The university said recently that it may have taken steps to check the erratic power supply in the school through alternative energy sources. One of the measures is the use of water and biofuel to generate power supply for the institution. The university had also procured two new generating plants at N250 million to improve on power supply in the school. The money was raised from internal sources. The Deputy Vice Chancellor, Prof. Agbaje, said it would be unreasonable to invest so much in laboratories, libraries, classrooms as well as on electronic resources without students having access to them due to lack of electricity. He said “the university is addressing the problem of power supply. We are taking very active steps. As a first step, we are experimenting with solar energy, part of the university like the Central Administration and the main road are now powered by solar energy but it is very expensive and that is why we started with an experiment. We started one, we learnt from it and then we moved on. We awarded a research grant as a university for a proposal to use a combination of water and bio-fuel as sources of energy for the university”.

The Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria recently urged the Federal Government to improve on power supply to specialists and teaching hospitals in the country, as poor power supply was threatening the multi-billion naira equipment supplied to some hospitals. The national president of the association stated this during a facility tour of some state-of-the-art equipment installed at the University College Hospital by the Federal Government between 2002 and 2006 at a cost of about N1.3bn. There, he was told by a board member of the hospital, that the major problem confronting the tertiary hospital, especially as it related to the effective use of the facility was epileptic power supply. He urged the Federal Government to channel its resources into the generation of 60,000 megawatts instead of its current plans to generate 6,000 MW, arguing that the energy demand went beyond that capacity. In his words: “It is a pity that the Federal Government didn't have that foresight to know that power demands increases with population, with development. When European countries had this foresight, they started building nuclear power plants because those ones generate a large quantity of power. We too should have had that foresight. If we didn't build nuclear power plant, we should have built more power plants over time to cope with the demand for development. Now, the government needs to really work hard. Not this 6,000MW they are targeting. By the time they provide 6,000MW maybe we are already needing 50,000MW. So, they need to target something big and work towards it. That is how to solve this problem."

Mr. Nwokeoma of Punch Newspapers wrote: The country had been said to be among the 12 countries that harbour three quarters of the world's illiterate population with a 63 per cent illiteracy rate, according to the 2007 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, recently released. The report further indicates that the country has a high incidence of illiteracy with most of the people "unable to read, write and use computational skills." Till date, there is no report of any response from relevant government quarters, let alone any expression of 'sadness' over such a disheartening disclosure.

As if that was not lamentable and grim enough, the Country Director of the United Nations Habitat in Nigeria, Prof. Johnson Falade was recently reported to have disclosed that the poverty rate in the country shot up from 46 per cent in 1996 to 76 per cent at present, a fact corroborated somewhat by the Director-General of the Ibadan-based Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, Prof. Tunji Akande, who asserted that 80 per cent of Nigerians now live below the poverty level. This makes one wonder if the G-20 is a gathering of illiterate and poverty-stricken nations for the President to so loudly lament Nigeria’s exclusion!

What engendered and made the foregoing, and evidently, detestable socio-economic realities extant in the country is not the absence of human and natural resources, at least the President himself admitted this as much, but the essential leadership to harness them for national regeneration, growth and development. The problem with Nigeria, everybody seems to affirm, is with those that lay claim to its leadership. It is sad enough that our electoral process and system does not allow for the nurturing of those who can readily salvage the situation. And that is why, if we continue as we have had, Nigeria would still be missing when the roll-call of the G-20 meeting would be called in, say 2050, Vision 2020 or no Vision 2020! It also shows that it takes more than population and resources to be a great nation.

It is shameful, not just sad that Nigeria is unable to fulfil its manifold potential over four decades after political independence. I surveyed the line-up of the nations that made up the G-20, and tried as I did, I could not see anywhere its leadership is as self-serving and unpatriotic as the case with Nigeria. None has even been blighted by its leaders as is the case with the country, where corruption and greed of the political class, a national ethos of sorts, had combined to make the country a perpetually potential great one. Much more remarkable is that there is none where its economy is run on imported generators with attendant costs and its transportation system as pedestrian as is obtainable in Nigeria.

This obviously is a wake up call to President Yar'Adua to go beyond "seeing visions" of greatness for the country. He should muster the needed political will, which is lacking presently, to put things right as widely expected. Posterity will remember him not for his lamentations, but for his ability to transform the fortunes of this nation.

Many Nigerians are angry that President Obama is going to Ghana instead of Nigeria. This writer does not see it that way. Obama not coming to Nigeria is the best thing for him to do, because his coming to Nigeria would have accorded respect and international recognition to an illegitimate, corrupt and inert government in Abuja that cannot get anything rightly done. Afterall, there are hundreds of Obamas in Nigeria who are waiting for the chance to excel, but, will not be allowed to rise to limelight. If Nigerians want Obama, let them look inward in the country to find some of them. How can Obama come to a country where its government is using all the instruments of coercion at its disposal to kill the people of Niger Delta because of oil? The bloods this government is recklessly pouring away in the creeks and all over the country through its policies, are crying for justice, the nemesis will surely come.

For those not happy that Obama is visiting Ghana instead of Nigeria, this writer has a piece of advice for them: Let’s all help chase this inept and noxious government away on or before 2011 and then work assiduously for the emergence of Nigerian Obamas, through the democratic process, in all three tiers of government. Then presidents and heads of governments in the world will be falling over themselves to visit Nigeria.

For those who don’t know: Many blacks from North America and the Caribbean, who want to “go back to their root”, have long made Ghana their second home because of the relative peaceful nature of that country. Nigeria would have been their first choice, had there been a semblance of normality in that country. Steve Wonder lives now partially in Ghana while Rita Marley, Bob Marley’s widow, lives there permanently. Ghana has got its act together and deserves to host our beloved Obama. An Igbo Proverb says: “If a child washes the hands clean, he/she will be allowed to dine with the elder (nwata kwopu aka ya, ösöro okenyi rie nri)”. It is good that Obama is not coming to Nigeria; otherwise we might be in the headline that he lost his wrist watch at the airport as he was greeting the “dignitaries” without knowing when one of them removed his watch.

Just as a passing comment: Let Ms Waziri of EFCC continue her noise making as nobody is buying the trashes she is spewing out. She should first of all clean herself and her EFCC before shouting to high heavens. Nigerians want to know what happened to the N75 million she withdrew from EFCC’s accounts as information fund, how she acquired all the plots of land she has in Abuja, why she accepted the Mercedes SL 450 (SUV) from Governor Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State amongst numerous corruption allegations hanging on her neck.

This writer has said it once, twice and will continue to say that Nigeria has only one problem and that is corruption; it is the primary problem from which all other problems emanated. If corruption is curbed, every other problem will vamoose with a jiffy from the landscape.

Some vice-chancellors are making matters worse for their university. The universities are crying for more funds, but, the little they get, is being embezzled, looted or wasted by the university administrators, then another day, they will blame the government for not funding them well enough. We all know that the universities are under-funded, but, the universities administrators should endeavour to put the little that trickles in into judicious use. The government might have been very hesitant to release funds to the universities, after the ones released before was mismanaged. A government that does not want to act (fund the universities) will see the mismanagement of the already released funds as an already made excuse to negate on its responsibilities.

The corruption inherent in all facets of the Nigerian society has not spared the ivory towers. The universities are also consumed in bickering over posts. Some times, the things one sees at our universities are worst case scenarios, much worse than the things happening at our motor parks. Some lecturers in fighting for academic or political posts at the universities, have resorted to despicable behaviours which will make the touts at the motor parks look like saints.

The Federal Government said it had received grants totalling N196.6 billion (about £740 million and $180 million from the World Bank and the British Department for International Department (DfiD) to help finance a new roadmap for the Nigerian education sector, approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC). The minister of education said that the roadmap is a comprehensive implementation document that will address most of the problems in the education sector and will try to identify all the challenges education has, proffer solutions and then set a time line on how to achieve the solution. He said: “like in the tertiary institutions, it is a well known fact that today more than one million Nigerians take JAMB examination but little over 10 per cent is admitted because of carrying capacity. And in the roadmap, we have suggested among other things, the provision of more classrooms, infrastructure, laboratories, library facilities, in fact all those things that will enable the various universities to take in additional students because you don’t take in people you know you cannot actually cater for, we treated that under what you call access”.

He added that the road map will deal a lot with implementation of programmes which had hampered previous efforts to reposition the education sector. Besides, there will be deliberate effort to give educational institutions more leverage to enable them improve intake of students. The minister said that the government cannot provide funds for the educational sector alone, that’s why the government have proposed public/private partnership, internal generation of revenue and the utilisation of funds that are available.

The problem here is that when the universities get their own share of this money the government has sourced as grant from the World Bank and the British Department for International Department (DfiD), it will not be used by many of the universities for what it is earmarked for. The vice-chancellors and their administrative staff will corner it away by over-inflating invoices making the money not to achieve it intended target.

We read recently from the Champion Newspapers that following complaints from the management of the Education Trust Fund (ETF) over alleged inability of vice chancellors, rectors and provosts from over 70 tertiary institutions to account for intervention fund disbursed to them, operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) will soon swoop on the affected institutions. That, commissioners of education from 17 states as well as State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) chairmen from 21 states will also face the music when the anti-graft agency spreads its net to gather those sabotaging the development effort of government in the education sector. The Paper claimed that a source said as at today, the cry of under-funding is clouding the actual problem in the education sector which is that of poor implementation and lack of transparency in the utilisation of money meant for the sector. The universities mentioned have a total of N6.343billion funds, the polytechnics have N2.884 billion, the seventeen states ministries of education involved have over N2.865billion, 11 Monotechnics have N368.530million and 14 Colleges of Education have over N1.272billion with the ETF which they all are yet to access as a result of their inability to account for earlier funds disbursed to them. These are lots of money which can go a long way to put few things right in those institutions.

Also the officials of Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) have been detained by the EFCC for collecting N850 million from the ETF for the importation of plastic chairs and desks out of N1.7 billion. The utilisation of the money was said not to have followed due process. Those arrested in connection with the alleged contract fraud, would be charged to court. The EFCC spokesperson, Mr. Babafemi, confirmed that one of the indicted directors, Mulkat Mufnang, who allegedly bolted, when the operatives of the commission came calling, had been arrested by the commission. Others including an American, Alex Cozman of InterMarket Nigeria Limited, who, reportedly, handled the controversial contract, have been arrested in connection with the alleged scam. It was alleged that the contract was awarded in November 2004 to InterMarket for the sum of N850 per plastic chair despite an order of the federal government banning the importation of plastic chairs. We also learnt that despite the contract being awarded without due process, UBEC still went ahead to pay another N45.1 million to the contractor for the movement of the plastic chairs to the country even when the main contract sum had covered such expenses. It was revealed that another N16.5 million was paid the contractor for the clearance of the chairs, even when it was stated in the main contract that the contractor would bear such costs.

Let’s look at only an instance of how those running our universities have been frittering away funds meant for the academic and infrastructural developments of their institutions: We learnt recently that the Federal Government Visitation Panel to the University of Benin probing the administration of the former Vice Chancellor, Prof. Emmanuel Nwanze, uncovered huge expenses of N48 million allegedly lavished on overseas trips and renovation of his official residence within the campus. The National Universities Commission (NUC) also raised alarm over the outrageous expenses of N60.4 million spent on one convocation ceremony in October 2008, which was the last by the Nwanze administration. The expenditure figure, according to the NUC, is the highest in the history of university convocation ceremonies in the country. The Visitation Panel headed by Prof. Peter Okebukola, which has started scrutinizing official financial records of the University, is said to be alarmed at the level of financial profligacy that was recorded in the University during the last year of Nwanze's administration which spanned 2004-2009.

We learnt that the financial reports prepared by the Bursary Department of the university showed that the Vice Chancellor's overseas trips for conferences during his tenure consumed N34.73 million. That within last year alone (2008), the former Vice Chancellor spent N12.13 million on overseas trips, while in 2007, the expenditure level on overseas trips was N7.96 million. The previous year, it was N7.66 million while in 2005, the trips cost the University N6.24 million. The reports also showed that the official guest house of the Vice Chancellor within the campus, where the Prof. Nwanze is currently residing, was renovated with N11.5 million within a year. Let’s not forget that the guest house is not the official residence of a substantive Vice Chancellor, as the University takes care of the official lodge differently.

We learnt further that the National Universities Commission had asked the current management of the institution to scrutinize the financial report which has it that the University of Benin spent N60.4 million on a convocation ceremony last year, higher than that of the University of Lagos, in a cosmopolitan location, by over 600 per cent. The convocation ceremony was a joint one to cater for the 33rd and 34th graduation batches. A highlight of the convocation expenses presented in the report was that N16.79 million was spent on convocation gowns while N18 million was paid for the convocation brochure.

This profligacy and waste of funds is not peculiar to University of Benin only. We cannot go into more details here due lack of space and time, but, be sure that virtually all the tertiary institutions in the country have these corruption “diseases”.

This writer knows too well that the problems bedevilling the education sector emanate not only from the government’s end. The lecturers and the university administration are contribution a lot to the rot in the sector. Afterall, this writer knows that some lecturers are the ones fanning the embers of cultism in the universities that have made the students and staff of the institutions to be living and working under fear as many have been killed, maimed, intimidated, threatened, raped by hoodlums masking their heinous inherent traits with the cloak of cultism. The President, National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Babale Bashir, recently accused government officials, especially political office holders of promoting secret cult-related activities in the nation's tertiary institutions. Bashir also said some government policies, such as the speculated tuition increase, trigger restiveness among students. The minister of education also accused security agencies, especially the police, of hobnobbing with cultists in various ways. His words: "As a matter of fact, police know these people and where they are. As a matter of fact, they can give you their names and the major problem has always been that when these cultists are arrested and taken to the police, they may not have the enabling instrument to prosecute them and more often than not, you see people coming to beg for their release and before you know it, they are released." He, therefore, charged the security agencies, ASUU and even the cultists to achieve their mission of bringing safety to institutions across the country.

The Champion Newspapers recently wrote that University of Abuja panics over bid to make it cultism rendezvous. That the Students' bid to relocate cultists’ base in the country's universities from one of the universities in the South-South to the University of Abuja has stirred a wave of panic not only within the university community but in the entire Federal Capital Territory. That the fears cannot be said to be misplaced given the havoc that cultism related activities had wrecked on defenceless students and citizens alike. That from the Obafemi Awolowo University, to the University of Benin, and University of Calabar just to mention a few, there had been serious cases of cult clashes which had led to wanton destruction of lives and property. That if these institutions could be said to be much older and so used to this vice, the recent cult clashes in a much younger school, University of Abuja, in which guns and machetes were freely used was a development that should be of concern to the authorities. However, in the last two years the institution's authorities have declared war against any form of criminal activities in the school and not less than thirty students have been expelled.

Recently, a 12 - member visitation panel set up by the Ogun State government to look into the affairs of the 26-year-old Olabisi Onabanjo University concluded its assignment and submitted its report to the state government. The anomalies discovered by the visitation panel were legion: some academic staff without requisite qualifications are in the employ of the university and some of the lecturers, reportedly, have questionable PhD degrees. Many academic staff members of the university were discovered to be lecturing with Master’s degrees 15 years after being employed with that qualification. That situation is contrary to the Nigerian Universities Commission’s (NUC’s) policy that a lecturer employed with a Master’s degree should acquire the PhD not more than 10 years after, while those employed with first degrees should obtain the Masters not more than three years after. The appointments and promotions of many of the lecturers reportedly did not follow due process.

The staff members, whose appointments and promotions were products of compromise, were allegedly engaging in the morally reprehensible act of mark-boosting for students for pecuniary or other selfish and devilish considerations. These lecturers, with apparent character flaws, have contributed immensely to the production of half-baked graduates who parade academic certificates that they cannot defend.

The admission policy of the institution ordinarily gave primacy to merit but the operators of the policy have deliberately pushed the discretionary factor to the forefront. More students were reportedly admitted to the university based on discretion than merit, whereas the ultimate intention of the school’s admission policy was 90 per cent merit and 10 per cent discretion. The entire system was ravaged and polluted by admission racketeering, which had fetched the perpetrators filthy wealth for many years. The authorities were said to be unable to account for funds received from the state government as the panel observed lack of congruence between the quantum of funds allocation and the facilities on the ground including physical infrastructure, quality of research and instructional materials.

Also recently, a visitation panel to Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko (AAUA), Ondo State, asked the state government to tinker in fundamental ways with the institution's academic and administrative structures to bring the school back on track for 21st Century challenges. The committee, headed by Prof. Tale Omole, which submitted its report to Governor Olusegun Mimiko in Akure, the state capital, described the institution's current situation as a Pandora box of galling atrocities. Omole alleged maladministration in the running of the school, stressing that the AAUA might have seen its golden era in the four-year tenure of Prof. Funso Akere as its vice chancellor (VC) and the almost six months Prof. Femi Mimiko acted as the institution's VC.

The panel said through several memoranda it received, that the AAUA had become a cesspool of financial larceny. It stressed that "official corruption, administrative incompetence, maladministration, arbitrariness, complete academic decay, immoral dealings, sexual harassment, admission and examination racketeering, extortion and other vices" were rampant in the institution. According to the panel, disunity and disharmony on the part of the principal officers is epitomised by the incumbent vice-chancellor, Prof. Phillips Abiodun. Indeed, the last two years was seen as a monument to administrative lawlessness akin to that period in the Bible as recorded in Judge 17: 6: “In those days, there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." The panel recalled that Abiodun's appointment from the start was bedevilled with a moral encumbrance, as he was allegedly disqualified from a group of 13 professors who applied for VC post in 2006 on the basis of not measuring up to standard but was later smuggled in by former Governor Olusegun Agagu's administration. Omole said: “This was done in utter disregard and criminal violation of the extant laws of the university and all senses of fairness and decency. The council at that time allowed itself to be used and overwhelmed by the intrusive forces at the highest level of government of the state then”. It was this warped appointment that created the burden of illegitimacy for the incumbent vice-chancellor from his first day in office, which cast a dark pall of gloom over the university, hence its academic and administrative doldrums. The state government, Omole said, "should also appoint people of integrity into the university governing council and slash its membership from 23 to 15 with the opening of its permanent site."

The Minister of Education, Dr. Sam Egwu, just approved the ban placed on the Lagos State University on admission of students for the 2008/2009 academic session. The axe fell following the failure of the institution to clear its admissions list with the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board. He said the institutions should follow the admissions criteria of merit, catchment area, educationally less developed states and the 60:40 science/arts ratio. According to Egwu, the institutions were advised not to charge more than N1, 000 for post-UME screening exercise as decided by the National Council on Education. He said, "Let it be said here that some universities have already flouted this, and they will not go scot-free. Also the Niger Delta University results have been withheld by asking for N4, 500 for post-UME. The board and the chief executive of JAMB have been instructed to withhold their results. We cannot run a lawless institution”. The universities should not operate outside the law; LASU knows that admissions is through JAMB as the universities are no longer autonomous, so it was foolish of them to admit students on their own volition and the Niger Delta University should have obeyed the order given to it, afterall, being a state university of Bayelsa State, the second largest oil producing state in the country, that is raking billions every month from the federation account, it is supposed not to charge students anything, as it is supposed to be awash with funds.

The bottom line here is that the government is not helping matters here anyway; it has politicized the vice-chancellorship post and is appointing unqualified people as vice-chancellors and these mediocre vice-chancellors will be at lost as to what is required of them. When that is the case, the qualified lecturers who are supposed to be appointed the administrative heads of their university will be watching with dismay and will be wondering how on earth the government appointed such a fellow as the vice-chancellor of the university. The lecturers who think that they were jumped over or ignored in the appointment, might decide to make life very hard for the vice-chancellor and then stalemate develops and the vice-chancellor might not achieve anything within his/her term as he/she will spend the whole time warding off the opposition and challenges to his/her appointment and will have no time for the business of running the university. The government do also commit more blunders from time to time by bringing a person from another university to be the vice-chancellor of another university. Here, the newly appointed vice-chancellor will need time to study his/her new environment, the problems of the university, and to know the university’s peculiar or unique culture and before he/she settles down to the business of running the university, almost half a year must have elapsed, then he/she might not achieve much before his/her term expires. The government should always appoint people as vice-chancellors from the university in question as they know their environment, who’s who in the university, the problems of the university and how to get things done there. The kind of politics going on at our universities for the vice-chancellorship, deanship or professorship posts is disgusting and a university is supposed to be the least place to see such ugly bickering, but, in Nigeria, anything goes.

Yar’Adua recently summoned the Minister of Education, Dr. Sam Egwu, to Aso Rock, over the crises bedevilling the education sector, including the row over the appointment of Vice Chancellors in some Federal universities and also to explain the unending strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Dr. Egwu said that the row over the appointment of Vice Chancellors in some universities was becoming an embarrassment to the federal government describing the situation where universities known for excellence and standards, had allowed themselves to be a theatre of ethnic, religious and political sentiments, describing it as unfortunate and unacceptable. The minister faulted the situation where instead of working to raise the standards, the universities ended up flouting rule of law and laid-down procedures and employed religion and ethnicity to determine who emerged as Vice Chancellors. But the minister failed to tell us that no vice-chancellor can be appointed without him recommending the person to the visitor of the university in question, who is the president, who therefore approves the appointment. What are they really talking about, do they think we are buffoons or what?

Prof. Ijeomah said recently “You will hear: government has earmarked this amount for education; but the thing is that the amount never gets to education. Education must be taken away from politics, because it controls the destiny of this nation. It controls what our children will be. It controls what those who will rule this country will be. So, it is not a thing you can toil with. Unfortunately it is being toiled with in this country. Now, whom do you blame?

So, when you centralise the management of education without the resources to manage it, the result is failure. Then, government set up JAMB. People interpreted JAMB differently, but all we knew was that there were many applicants from the South who scored very high, but were not admitted. Then many people from the North who scored low were admitted. So it looked like JAMB became an instrument for controlling southern advancement in education. As a result of that, state governments started building their own universities so that those of their children who couldn't get in through JAMB, got admission to state university. It was a political solution. But it is creating a problem of overflow, of abundant graduates. During our time when we got admission to universities, the Department of Manpower Development could go round the whole school to know how many people are in secondary schools; how many people will be entering the university; how many people will be graduating from the university and will be looking for jobs. But after the Civil War and after the proliferation of universities without meaningful coordination, unemployed graduates became the order of the day.

But the first thing that made education fall is government taking over education without being able to fund education; compelling universities to over-admit to get enough funds within the university. That shouldn't be. The universities over-admit; no chairs in the classroom; students will stand by the window to take lectures; that is not ideal. So, government should not have taken over education in the first instance, because it lacked the capacity to manage education. As I told you, everyday you hear of new university being approved. Who did the feasibility study? How many graduates does this country require? How many technical graduates do we need? There must be a form of plan when you have a focus. In this country, we don't ask those kinds of questions.

They will tell you remove subsidy, let the universities go and generate money. University is not a profit making organisation. A university is built to get resources for those who built it and use the resources to do research. The government receives the research and implements. So, education is expensive. Nothing will save education until the government is ready to face the problems squarely. Government should be ready to pump in sufficient funds into education. But I know that within Nigeria we have enough people who can salvage education. What we need is the political will. But is Yar'Adua prepared to salvage education? We will tell him what to do and education will be restored.

The mark of a good leader is your capacity to identify people who can assist you. A nation that wants to succeed must identify talents. Nigerians don't identify talents. They are blinded by nepotism and ethnic interests, by the quota system. You do not go to the United Nations with a village mentality. A nation must send its best to UNO. It doesn't matter whether it is Igbo, Hausa or Yoruba. We look at those who carry ballot boxes for us when we are campaigning. Then we reward them with appointments; when they go there, they become square pegs in round holes. You do not go to the moon on quota system. Assemble all the scholars, take the best 10; if the best 10 come from the North, I don't care. If the best 10 come from Yorubaland, I don't care. If they come from Igboland, I don't care. But, let them give their national best.

You want universities to be proactive, put a right vice-chancellor there. Don't look back whether he is from Yoruba or Igbo. Let the vice chancellor show leadership. I have been everything in the university, but I have never nursed the ambition to be a vice chancellor. I know what that position requires. As a registrar, I worked with some vice chancellors. I was able to sit back and look at their problems and saw how some of them inefficiently approached the problems and there was crisis. People apply for that office without knowing its requirements, only to discover that they are overwhelmed with the problems. They will go to Abuja and lobby so that they will be appointed V-C. But when they come back and sit on the chair, the realities of problems will explode in their faces. I see small boys whom I thought vying to be V-Cs and I was laughing. How many vice chancellors have succeeded in this country?

The sector does need declaring a crisis. All we are saying is let the government realise that in the attempt to make education an instrument of national unity, you have reduced the quality of education. Only the Federal Government can move itself backward; they set up Shomade Commission that advised on government taking over the schools and since government took over the schools, the schools collapsed. First, the government should give schools to private owners. The government should make provisions that will make students know they are in school for a purpose. What we have lacked is discipline. If you go to schools, because the government refused to pump money into public schools, teachers are selling shoes when they should be teaching; they are selling wrapper and earrings. When do they teach?

As of now, academic activities in Nigerian universities are grounded as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) began a two-week warning strike to protest the failure of the Federal Government to sign and implement the agreement reached between it and ASUU. ASUU said the Federal Government had pushed it into an unavoidable strike situation, having persevered for two long years of “painstaking and scientific negotiation and six months wait for the government to sign and implement the agreement. ASUU president stressed that the Federal Government and ASUU negotiating teams searched for a minimum point from which the Nigerian University System could make significant progress towards reversing the brain drain that had deprived the country of a vital casual agency in national development, especially in the development and sustenance of large pool of scholars whose intellectual and scientific production would have repositioned Nigeria. The ASUU leader bemoaned government’s ability to fulfil the potentiality it had shown but which had been called into question because of steady decay as the survival of the country in the 21st century lies in the country’s ability to produce applied and theoretical knowledge in science, technology and the humanities. The ASUU boss maintained that if the agreement the body reached with the government was signed and implemented, it was capable of revitalizing and accelerating the development of Nigerian University System into one of the best in the world, a task which could no longer be delayed if Nigeria is to become one of the leading economic and culturally advanced countries in the world. According to him, in view of the enormous importance of education for national development, education must continue to be funded heavily by public funds through budgetary and non-budgetary purposes.

The ASUU president notified the federal and state governments that the union would resist the dissolution of the governing councils of any university. In his words: “This matter was not envisaged by the writers of the university statutes, as it was believed that university councils and vice chancellors would be allowed to run out their tenures normally. Unfortunately, government decided to be lawless by dissolving the councils prematurely and at will, against the provisions in the statutes. In view of the foregoing, the union uses this opportunity to let the government know that they are responsible for the crises in some universities,”

For those who don’t know: ASUU was established in 1978 as a labour union of lecturers in Nigerian universities in response to the nation-wide trade union restructuring exercise carried out by the federal government. The union's ideological position placed it at the vanguard of opposition to the excesses of military dictatorship, particularly its debilitating effect on academic freedom, university autonomy, funding, falling standards and the attendant brain drain. In the circumstance, relations between ASUU and the government became fractious, contentious and antagonistic.

This antagonistic orientation has characterised ASUU's relations with the federal government in the last 31 years and has found expression in incessant strikes, sometimes going on for months on end before a temporary truce is arranged. In short, strike has become a permanent feature of the country's education landscape. This has placed ASUU in an ambivalent position particularly in terms of the perception and attitude of the Nigerian public to the association. While ASUU's supporters cherish its progressive struggle for the redemption of the university system, the public has grown wary of its incessant strikes and is therefore less sympathetic towards its cause.

For instance, in 1980 ASUU declared a Trade Dispute with the federal government, making autonomy the central issue in dispute. Over the course of the next one year, ASUU struggled with the government of President Shehu Shagari over issues of funding, salaries, autonomy and academic freedom, the brain drain, and the very survival of the university system. In 1985, the Buhari-Idiagbon regime introduced Decree 16, which transferred the University Senate's power to determine, regulate, accredit and monitor academic programmes to a federal agency, the National Universities Commission (NUC). The decree imposed uniformity on the university system, further eroding the principle of autonomy and academic freedom that are the hallmarks of universities in all civilised countries. ASUU campaigned vigorously against the move but, in the end, the government had its way, transforming the universities into appendages of state bureaucracy.

Another ASUU strike in 1988 over autonomy, salaries and modalities for negotiation led to the proscription of the union in August 1988. ASUU was de-proscribed in 1990. However, when negotiations for improvement in salaries to stem the brain drain that was draining the university system of qualified staff broke down, the union went on strike again in May 1992. ASUU called off the strike after a week when the Industrial Arbitration Panel (IAP), ordered the parties to go back to the negotiating table. Characteristically, the government refused to negotiate; forcing ASUU to resume the strike in July. The government responded by proscribing the union again in August 1992. Under pressure from the public the two parties went back to the negotiation table and eventually produced the historic September 3, 1992 Agreement. Most significantly, the agreement allowed for a periodic review of the funding needs of the universities; reaffirmed the right of workers to collective bargaining, and provided a basis for ASUU's subsequent struggle for the defence of the country's educational system.

The struggle has persisted ever since and is at the root of the current warning strike by ASUU. The union wants the government to implement the agreement the two parties signed last January. That agreement made provisions for the welfare of academic staff, university autonomy, funding, brain drain and the case of the sacked lecturers of the University of Ilorin. ASUU, and indeed the generality of the Nigerian people, had hoped that the two parties had finally found a formula that would restore stability and sanity into the university system.

Unfortunately, ASUU's expectations, and that of the public, appear to have been shattered by the government's apparent reluctance or unwillingness to implement the agreement. For ASUU, the government's attitude is in character and typical of its past conduct. To be sure, government had acted in like manner in the past, and for ASUU, which has been treated with similar contempt in the past, the union could ill-tolerate the situation without going on strike to force government to implement the agreement reached with the union in June 2001 and January 2009. Both parties agreed on improved welfare condition and infrastructural development of the nation's public university system and the review of the law that set up the Education Trust Fund. Here, the government is expected to inject increased funding in phases into the system, while negotiations are to be done at intervals to review the success and otherwise of the implementation. Unfortunately, the government having consistently reneged on these promises, forced the leadership of the union to call for another round of strike to press home its demands.

YarÁdua and his band of morons in government are pernicious to Nigeria; they should be ready for the consequences, if anything happens to Nigeria. The prospect of Nigeria disintegrating soon looks plausible, I hope it does not get to that.

Concluding Part to be out soon.

THE THANXS IS ALL YOURS!!!

Continued from Part 3

REFERENCE:

In this part of the article are excerpts from:

One of this writer’s previous articles

Tribune of May 12 and 26, 2009

Guardian of May 10, 12, 18, 19 and 22, 2009

Punch of December 9, 2008, May 22 and 27, 2009

ThisDay of May 28, 2009

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