by Tomi Bolade

 

If you ask me, I’d say as long as the running of education is the direct responsibility of government, this viscous cycle will continue, there’s not much government is managing well or has excelled at.  

ASUU is still on strike, yeah I know…it’s really quite depressing, some even joke that it’s an annual ritual in Nigerian universities and like most of the problems we have in Nigeria, we are managing it and not solving it. I guess this is one of the things Fela was trying to talk about in his song Shuffering and Shmilling… It seems no one really knows the answer; no one has the solution to this perennial problem.

If you chose to get educated in Nigeria’s public higher institutions, you knew from when you bought your university admission form that you’d spend longer than the normal duration required for getting your degree, because ASUU will go on strike, if providence helps you and they don’t, which is highly unlikely, NASU will go on strike, if that doesn’t happen, then students will protest about lack of water, light or something that will lead to their schools being shut for a period of time. Even talking
about it is energy sapping…. So why aren’t we tired of this vicious cycle? Why have we come to accept it as a rite of passage for all who chose to get a Nigerian public school education?    I might be wrong, but I have not heard of university teachers going on strike anywhere else but in Nigeria, again I stand to be corrected on this. Nigeria seems to be one of the few countries in the world where strikes by university lecturers are a common feature.

Since around 1988 ASUU has been going on strike on and off for one reason or the other, most times for improved working conditions. To be fair to ASUU, the only way to get anything from any Nigerian government, including the current one, is to arm twist them, either by going on strike as in the case of ASUU and other labour unions or take up arms, as we saw in the case of the Niger Delta militants/agitators, choose which applies to you, or even Boko Haram, remember the option of amnesty was on the table before the current military onslaught in the affected areas.    What is however important to me is how do we put an end to strikes in our educational institutions? I have a couple of suggestions that I think cannot only put an end to strikes but can also make our universities strong again.    Whether we like it or not, it’s time for our universities to be autonomous of government control. At the moment all public higher institutions are funded wholly by government.

You don’t need a prophet to tell you that the educational system has now become a burden to government. Everywhere you go, you see dilapidated infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms and inadequate teaching materials. I’m sure students who attend private schools and study abroad don’t have these kinds of problems, if they do, it can’t be compared to the rot in public higher institutions. The number of people going to school these days far outnumber pre colonial or early post-colonial Nigeria. At that time, government could afford to fund education appropriately. Even though they would never admit it, (I
think its an ego thing) government just doesn’t have the muscle to pick up the bill for everyone’s education anymore. Universities have to be allowed to generate their own funding as it is done in other parts of the world and determine their carrying capacity as well as areas of interests. This might mean that students will start paying tuition, but that would also mean that the quality of education would improve. The current model does no one any good.

I know you’ve heard the saying, if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. Good education is not cheap, it’s not overly expensive as well, but has to come at a price. Government alone cannot cough out the money, parents and well meaning Nigerians must get involved. Companies must set up endowments in the name of their organizations or something like that. They must offer scholarships to the brightest students in different fields and even offer internship and job placements for bright students thereafter. We need to re-evaluate our government scholarship system. It needs to go to people who truly need it and not just anyone. The present arrangement does not give to the most deserving. University administrators also have to get creative and devise new ways of generating funds for their universities.

Partnering with the private sector is one way, another way is calling for donations as we saw a few years back where the University of Lagos set up a N1 billion Endowment fund. I wonder what ever happened to that fund….   In addition, government can offer a certain percentage tax cut to corporations who give a percentage of their profit to educational institutions. We need to encourage the private sector to see education as an investment and entice them to put some money into it. We can also borrow the Abacha model of setting up an education fund from where special grants can be given to performing universities to carry out research or developmental projects.

The National Universities Commission has to do a better job of ensuring students/parents are not exploited by university administrators as well as ensuring that universities are delivering on the promise of providing quality education to all. The NUC has to ensure that university curricula is up to date and keeps with time, many of what is being taught in our universities at the moment is outmoded and out of touch with modern day realities. It must also ensure that the infamous Nigerian factor does not creep in and that only the best are hired in our schools.    The system of politicising the position of the Vice Chancellor cannot continue if we seriously want a proper university system. The VC and board of the university must comprise of the best administrators in the land. Show of hands, who would elect an ill-qualified person to run their company?

Better still would you allow someone who had no driving experience to drive you? Why do we then think that random government appointees should be deciding the educational direction of our country? If they are on the board as a form of reward for political contributions, do we think they will do a good job?    In the last couple of years some of Nigeria’s best brains – young and old – have left the country to seek for the proverbial greener pastures. And it seems an irony that many of them have found it. The reason they leave is our universities have stopped being a place of competition, a place of excellence and have now become centres of mediocrity. Our educational institutions must attract the best to teach in our universities and they must be paid competitive salaries as well.

Almost all of the world’s Nobel Prize winners teach in American universities, this is not a coincidence. Those universities are ready to provide the best offers to attract the best and we must too. We need to create an environment that is conducive both for learning and teaching.

We must make room for the best students in the land and give them space to grow and become world beaters and be the drivers of Nigeria’s rejuvenation.    In addition, government must improve it’s interest in the primary and secondary level of education. We place a lot of emphasis on tertiary education, which is not a bad thing, as this  is where the research for other levels emanate, but we must not forget that the tertiary level is doomed if the primary and secondary are not properly taken care of. If we can properly fix the lower levels, we will not have as much problem as we have at the tertiary level. At the moment our universities are inundated with students who many would categorize as unteachable. Where students who can’t read or write find their way into university classrooms, there is nothing a university lecturer can do for such people and that adds to the problem.    I am sure many people won’t like the fact that they will pay more to get an education in Nigeria and many people will oppose autonomy because it will threaten many of the malfeasance that plague our educational institutions, that’s on the part of students, lecturers and administrators, the question to ask however is for how long shall we continue to endure this terrible situation?

Another question I want us to chew on is why are more  people now choosing to send their children to places like Ghana, Togo,
Benin Republic, Ukraine, Europe and America? All around you, universities from the UK, Canada, the US and even Eastern Europe are having counselling sessions to convince Nigerians to study in their country.

More and more people are seeing it as an option and they are paying for it too. The number of private universities has grown tremendously in the last 10 years, many of them not fantastic, but expensive and more and more people are patronizing them because they are not as disruptive as public institutions. What this signifies is that the old model has failed and like every other failed system in Nigeria, people are resorting to self-help.    Nigerian students who pay through their noses to go abroad for education are not subjected to strikes and Nigerian lecturers who work outside the country are never reported to be in a Tom and Jerry relationship with their employers, so why is the situation different in Nigeria? There is model that is being used to attract not just our students but our best teaching brains, that model is not exclusive to them, we can borrow, steal or copy it, as long as it saves us from this constant bickering in our university system.

If you look at the demands from ASUU, you’ll want to agree that they sound solid and if properly implemented would benefit Nigeria’s educational system, but can government alone get the job done? I think not. It’s easy to argue that there’s a subsisting 2009 agreement that government entered into, but the realistic question is can this or any other government provide a lasting solution to our educational problems? Can we truly say that this will be the last time ASUU will go on strike?

If you ask me, I’d say as long as the running of education is the direct responsibility of government, this viscous cycle will continue, there’s not much government is managing well or has excelled at.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.