By Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik, PhD
Over the last year, I have had few friends with the opinion that Nigeria is too poor to fund university education. But I am yet to be convinced. No one will see the lifestyle of the political class and believe that Nigeria is poor. You can’t be too poor to fund university but rich enough to be establishing new ones as constituency projects. I strongly believe that at the level we are now, education at all levels should be properly funded. The funding should not be a problem if we properly define our priorities.
You can’t be planning to use 305 billion naira for the election of the leaders for the people you cannot spend 305 billion naira to educate. ASUU was fighting for the release of 210 billion naira for the revitalisation of universities and FG insisted there is no money and that Nigeria is too poor to afford that. Meanwhile, we are rich enough to conduct the election of those leaders with 305 billion naira. Amazing!
The people will be counted in 2022 and about 177.33 billion naira is approved for that. Meanwhile, they can only afford 30 billion naira that was released with so much noise for the revitalisation of all public universities. The primary schools are in a sorry state, thanks to the state governors. Some state governors pay primary school teachers 30% of their salary (pre-minimum wage salary scale). Not enough funds to educate Nigerians but rich enough to count them with 177.33 billion naira.
Over the last year, Buhari added some new universities to the Jonathan’s TETFund universities. Some of the universities are the Federal University of Transportation Daura, Federal University of Agriculture, Zuru, Federal University of Health Science, Otukpo, etc. You can’t be too poor to fund the existing universities but rich enough to establish new ones.
When you watch the luxury lifestyle of the political office holders and family, it gets more difficult to convince someone that Nigeria cannot afford quality education for the people. Politics is such a lucrative business in Nigeria that every Nigerian wishes to get in. Every political office holder comes out much richer than he was before getting in, yet Nigeria is poor.
If Nigeria is actually damn broke, nobody will seek political offices. But they make elections a do-or-die affair, invest a lot of money with a hope for a good return on their investment and we are told Nigeria is broke. Nigerians in diaspora, a place where every Nigerian wish to run to, even lobby for political appointments.
Public University education is not a business venture and is not registered as one. It is an institution to train a skilled workforce for the nation and create new ideas and knowledge. But universities have been urged to improve on their IGR. Some people that are as poor as me or even poorer believe that FG cannot afford to fund the universities but universities should generate IGR but not from the students.
Quality Undergraduate programs are not charity training. It’s either the government pays for it as it’s done in Scandinavian countries or the students pay for it through a government-supported loan scheme as it’s done in the UK. Universities are not meant to set up industries to make money to fund their UG programs. If you agree that the government is too poor to fund it, the students will eventually pay (through parents or bank loans) for it and we are getting there very soon.
As the campaign for IGR intensified in public universities established to develop a skilled workforce for the nation, FG continue to introduce more measures to starve public universities of funds. But nobody is talking about IGR from the numerous research agencies and centres established by FG nationwide. Centre for Automotive Design and Development (CADD) produced prototype tricycles in the 90s while it was located in ABU. They have not been able to commercialise any vehicle after then. They have an annual budget. Meanwhile, you can see our roads littered with hundreds of imported tricycles (keke) from India. Imagine if we were serious and purposeful, and those Keke are produced by CADD in Nigeria.
There is the Biotechnology Development Agency with Bioresource Development Centres nationwide. The mandate is to carry out “well-focused” research and development in biotechnology in priority areas of food and agriculture, health, industry, environment, and other strategic sectors for national development. Well, go to the centres to see their “bioresource” activities and their IGR. They receive a budgetary allocation every year.
We have Research Institutes for chemical technology, Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure with subsidiaries, Institute of medical research, etc. Not sure of their outputs and products they have commercialised at these centres since establishment and their IGR. Not sure how much they are funded or they are just like the universities without research funds. But unlike the universities, IGR is not demanded from them. This is possibly because they don’t make a noise like ASUU.
Too poor to fund research but rich enough to establish all sorts of nonfunctional independent research institutions across the country. One begins to wonder the motive behind the establishment of these numerous “unproductive” supposed “research centres/Institutes” with annual budgetary allocations.
Let’s have a look at a research centre in Norway that grows from the university to become one of Europe’s largest independent research organisations.
The Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) established SINTEF in 1950. It is a multidisciplinary research outfit with a mission to provide solutions to the industries. NTH later merged into the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and SINTEF became an arm of NTNU. The oil companies and other industries were encouraged by the government to do business with SINTEF.
SINTEF later transformed into an independent research organisation in 2008 with 6 institutes: SINTEF Community, SINTEF Digital, SINTEF Energy Research, SINTEF Industry, SINTEF Manufacturing, and SINTEF Ocean. They shop for competent researchers from around the world to work for them. They have around 2000 employees from 75 countries. Their researches are in Health, Technology and society, Oil and energy, ICT, Materials and chemistry, Construction, and Marine Science.
Despite its independence, SINTEF maintained its close collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the University of Oslo without conflict of interests. Some of the SINTEF Institutes are located close to the relevant department in the universities. For example, SINTEF Energy Research is sharing a wall with the Department of Electric Power Engineering of NTNU.
A part of SINTEF’s social mission is the commercialisation of research results. Their research outputs gave birth to about 19 companies in Norway. SINTEF has 2,500 industrial partners, and a turnover of about €353M. Over 90% of its income is through bilateral industrial research contracts and participation in European or national research projects.
That is a brief on a research organisation that is established as a public institution with lessons to learn. They would not have been able to achieve all that if their employment is not on competence but who you know. Most of our research agencies and subsidiaries are established as independent institutions with a weak link with the universities and zero links with the industries.
Why are ours different? Why are these Agencies and their subsidiaries established? What interests are they serving? With the annual budgetary allocations over these years, what is the technological and economic contribution of these numerous research centres? What is their IGR? How much are they generating from their research to support their activities?
We travel to all these countries where things are working. We saw, returned and instead of making efforts to replicate the system we have seen out there, we choose to focus on making money out of our system and leave it poor. Just imagine if we had managed our Research Agencies/Institutes the way Norwegians are running SINTEF. Imagine if our universities and other institutions are handled the way the Norwegian government is handling theirs.
It appears most of our institutions were not established to succeed but to serve some interests. You can’t be too rich to establish institutions without a set key performance indicator to measure productivity and output. Few guys will possibly make some money out of it and it ends there. Meanwhile, they are too poor to fund public universities and tirelessly working towards adding the universities to the list of our institutions that must not work. Unfortunately, Nigeria cannot work without making these institutions to work. So, who will make these systems work, and who will save the rich but poor Nigeria?
We need to properly define our priorities. We can’t keep doing politics with critical sectors like education and health sectors and expect a different result. You can’t litter the country with research agencies that are not productive and expect development. They should be streamlined and there should be a mandatory link between such centres and the nearby universities.
You can’t keep establishing more tertiary institutions when the existing ones are not properly funded. It makes no sense to be rich enough to establish more public institutions but claim to be so poor to inject the necessary funds to sustain them and make them purposeful. Focus on the existing ones and make them world-class and you will see the flow of revenue from forex to sustain it.
We need re-orientation. We need a change of mindset. We (the leaders and the followers) need attitudinal change towards public institutions. We need to kill the evil of greed and self-centredness that is destroying the country and dragging Nigeria backward.
Meanwhile, on a lighter note, instead of spending N305 billion on elections in 2023 that may most likely be rigged, I think we should consider begging President Buhari, as a man of “integrity”, to appoint his successor, the NASS members, the governors, etc., and save the 305 billion naira for education.
©Amoka
