Rethinking Federal Role in Nigeria’s university system

 

By Ladipo Adamolekun Preamble The Federal Government’s hijack of regional universities in 1975 was consistent with the centralism and uniformity that the military imposed on the country during their close to 30 year-rule. The universities at Nsukka, Ife, and Zaria – established by regional governments in 1960, 1962, and 1962 respectively – were taken over by the federal military government. The strong health of state-owned Lagos State University (LASU) today – ranked third after the University of Ibadan and University of Lagos out of the six Nigerian universities among the world’s best 1,500, according to the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2021 – is evidence that military centralism most probably had a negative impact on the health of the three regional universities.

Another important negative consequence for the health of Nigeria’s university system caused by military centralism and uniformity deserves to be highlighted. This is the transformation of the National University Commission (NUC) into an over-powerful and control-oriented government parastatal with very extensive powers that significantly undercut the powers of individual federal universities, and by extension, all the other universities. At its establishment in 1962, NUC was assigned only a buffer role: to function as a neutral body managing the relationship between the government and the universities. In the remaining paragraphs of this essay, I focus on three key areas of federal intervention in the university system that require rethinking: (i) role of NUC; (ii) interface with university staff unions, and (iii) support for research and development. I conclude with brief advocacy of the improved health of Nigeria’s university system.

 

As already mentioned, the NUC was established in 1962 to serve as a buffer between the universities and the government and was regarded as a protector of the autonomy of the universities. However, with the adoption of a series of decrees under successive military governments from the 1970s through the 1980s to the 1990s, the NUC became an over-powerful government parastatal with very extensive powers. In some respects, the powers conferred on the NUC amount to the usurpation of the powers of both University Councils and Senates as per the laws and statutes that established the institutions. Beyond what would pass as appropriate statutory and regulatory functions such as the administration of government subventions and grants to universities, quality assurance and accreditation of courses, and gathering and collation of quality data sets and statistics on all Nigerian universities, the NUC is today involved in a wide range of activities for which it has no comparative advantage whatsoever (for example, project implementation for universities, organisation of annual research fairs, and administration of a central research fund scheme). There is strong evidence that NUC’s centralized, domineering, and unified approach stifles experimentation and initiative at the level of individual universities (public and private). To end the centralism and uniformity that NUC has imposed on universities since the 1970s – with an increasingly heavier burden on the universities over the decades – measures aimed at reducing its powers and the wide scope of its functions should include abrogating those that enable it to wrongly push for uniformity among all universities (public and private) in disregard of the obvious point that uniformity and excellence are antithetical. I would also recommend that NUC’s accreditation function be hived off (together with staff and resources) and assigned to a separate independent statutory body.

 

 

 

The Accreditation Board/Council will be exclusively concerned with accrediting public and private universities as is the case in Ghana. Furthermore, there should be an immediate end to the operational subordination of universities to the NUC that results in key officers of the institutions spending a significant proportion of time in Abuja instead of working on their campuses. Federal Interface with University Staff Unions The operation of centralised labour unions for teachers at all levels that made sense under centralised unitary military rule has been maintained under civilian rule when the hierarchical federal-state relationship should no longer exist, at least, according to the 1999 Constitution. Specifically, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) negotiates salaries and other conditions of service at the federal level and the agreements become binding on state governments that did not participate in the negotiations. Persistent strikes that are linked to the challenge of implementing the agreements reached at such negotiations continue to undermine teaching and learning in both federal and state universities. Although ASUU has contributed hugely to the search for solutions to some of the problems that have caused the progressive decline in university education since the 1980s, it is also the case that ASUU has contributed to some of the problems that have caused the decline.

 

Paradoxically, the use of the strike weapon – estimated to account for close to 30 per cent of total time between 1999 and 2020 – that has been crucial in some of ASUU’s positive contributions has also resulted in an unstable academic calendar that is widely regarded as a signpost of decline. Concretely, an unstable academic calendar drives away foreign students and scholars, and Nigerians who can afford it go outside the country for university education, including in sub-standard institutions in Ghana. Given that tertiary education is in the concurrent legislative list, a state government that establishes a university should determine staff salaries and other conditions of service through the Governing Council that it creates. And it is reasonable to expect that the salaries and other conditions of service in universities across states would reflect the financial capability of the different states. Thus, while some states would be able to match the salary levels that the federal government establishes for the staff (academic and non-academic) in its universities, others might not be able to match them; and a few might be able to afford higher salary levels.

 

The uniformity that currently prevails regarding staff salaries and other conditions of service across all public universities is illogical and must be abandoned. Consequently, there would be as many university staff unions as there are government owners and this will help end the debilitating uniformity inherited from the military era and the concomitant unending nation-wide union strikes.

 

Of the 90 countries that have spent at least 50 million US dollars on research and development, R&D (with data set ranging from 2007 to 2018), only nine are in Africa (information accessed online on March 17th, 2021). The countries are, in descending order of total spending on R&D: Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Uganda, Sudan, Algeria, and Botswana. Strikingly, Nigeria, the continent’s largest economy, is missing while Egypt and South Africa, the second and third largest African economies, top the list. Against this backdrop, President Buhari’s recent announcement that Nigeria will henceforth spend 0.5% of its GDP on R&D – see Vanguard, March 16th, 2021 – would qualify as a declaration of intent to catch up. 

 

 

 

Better late than never! Assuming that the declared amount is provided in the 2022 budget and released during the Financial Year, Nigeria’s 0.5% R&D spending would still be lower than that of five of the nine African countries listed above, with between 0.6% and 0.8%. In most countries, government support for R&D predominates in funding academic R&D, with universities relying on industry and their own institutional funds to a lesser extent. In the absence of a formal structure for R&D, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) recently added support for academic R& D to its functions. Nature abhors a vacuum! Given the promised new big push for R&D spending, TETFUND should stick to its existing extensive mandates while the Federal Government should proceed, without delay, to establish a stand-alone structure that would ensure optimal management of the 0.5% of GDP for R&D. Fortunately, the FG can draw on two proposals based on discussions at the First Forum of Laureates of the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) and submitted to the presidency in December 2007. One is on the “National Research Foundation” and the other is on the “Science and Technology Research and Development Fund”. 

 

 

The obvious next step is for FG to arrange for the production of a fit-for-purpose R&D management structure. And its funding should be provided for in FG’s 2022 budget with a view to making it operational from January 2022. Conclusion: Brief Advocacy of Improved Health of Nigeria’s University System First, the criticisms of the NUCin this essay are largely based on critical comments made by various stakeholders concerned about the poor health of Nigerian public universities. For example, a significant number of stakeholders who attended the Fifth Forum of Laureates of the NNOM in December 2012 included the following in their Communique: “The Role of the NUC should be reviewed… In particular, its approach should be less authoritarian.”I would strongly suggest that the FG should establish a piece of appropriate machinery for the review of the role of the NUC, with a mandate that focuses on the desirability of repealing/amending the specific laws that have turned it into an overpowerful, control-oriented, and authoritarian parastatal. Second, the responsibility for delinking staff unions (academic and non-academic) in state universities from those in federal universities falls to each state government. State Governors who claim to be proponents of true federalism should take the lead – and the others are very likely to follow. Third and finally, it is incontrovertible that a critical factor for improving the health of Nigerian public universities is a significant steady increase in the annual funding provided by the federal and state governments. 

 

 

The prevailing funding levels over several decades are abysmally low. An additional argument for increased federal funding of its universities is the continued maintenance of tuition-free policy even though tuition fees are widely acknowledged as an important source of internal revenue for public universities in many countries across the continents. This argument is also applicable to state governments that have maintained a tuition-free policy. However, I would like to stress that introduction of tuition fees in public universities should be accompanied by an appropriate mix of scholarships, bursaries, and loans for ensuring that no Nigerian who is qualified for university education in a public institution is denied the opportunity because of his/her inability to pay prescribed fees. Professor Ladipo Adamolekun writes from Iju, Akure North, Ondo State

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