President Muhammadu Buhari
President Muhammadu Buhari has reportedly pledged top priority for an increase in university funding, and has instructed the National Universities Commission and the federal education ministry to work out how this might best be done.
The populous country’s leader is said to be disturbed by the poor performance of Nigerian universities in rankings.
According to reliable sources, Buhari summoned officials of the National Universities Commission and the Ministry of Education to explain the reasons for the absence of Nigeria in a recent ranking of top 1,000 world universities. From Africa, only institutions in Egypt and South Africa featured on the list.
Although the president was partly pleased that 28 Nigerian universities appeared on a ranking of top 100 institutions in Africa, he felt there could be more.
The officials informed Buhari that low funding was the fundamental reason for the poor performance of Nigerian universities, and the president decided that strengthening university funding would be a top priority of his administration.
His interest in the matter is both political and diplomatic. Ahead of presidential elections earlier this year, Buhari pledged in his campaign manifesto to increase funding for education, to raise all levels of the education system out of a state of decay.
The other reason is Nigeria’s quest for a seat in the United Nations Security Council as Africa’s permanent representative. It is well known that South Africa and Egypt are also fiercely vying for the slot.
Buhari intends to showcase a functional and efficient educational system – especially at university level – to boost Nigeria’s campaign within the international community to occupy an African place in the Security Council.
Throwing light on the matter Suleiman Bogoro, executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund or TETFund, confirmed that the government had started the process required to increase the current two per cent education tax, with which it supports TETFund, to between three per cent and four per cent.
He said the education ministry had made this recommendation in a comprehensive report to the presidency.
Once the proposal to raise the education tax had been reviewed and parliament had begun amending the TETFund Act to accommodate it, “the fund will play the expected role to ensure that Nigeria’s universities conform with international standards”.
The executive secretary noted that interventions by his agency in the areas of research and development had led to improved performances by Nigerian universities, which he said had also impacted positively on their ranking in Africa.
But Bogoro also confessed painfully that Nigeria was still outside lists of the world’s top 2,000 universities. There were only five African universities in the global top 1,000, three from South Africa and two from Egypt.
“If we increase the intervention fund and there is patriotic application of the funds in priority areas, the ranking of our universities will begin to compete with the very best in the world,” he said.
Academics have greeted the news of the proposal with mixed reactions, including scepticism. Many believe that Nigeria does have the resources to increase education funding to the 26 per cent of government spending recommended by UNESCO.
The Buhari administration should understand the fact that great nations had devoted large chunks of their money to funding education, said Dr Wale Suenu, a senior lecturer in history and diplomacy at Lagos State University.
“An increase in the education tax to a paltry 4 per cent will not take Nigeria anywhere.”
Buhari should take his cue from South Korea, which was underdeveloped and on a par with Nigeria in the 1960s but now has the sixth biggest economy in the world thanks to massive investment in education.
Despite the lean resources available, there were excellent research findings from Nigeria’s universities – but the world does not hear about them.
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