By Andrew A. Erakhrumen
This piece mirrors one of our familiar interactions with someone who will remain anonymous for the sake of confidentiality. The person is a university lecturer and a regular reader of our articles. Please read:
Anonymous: I believe by now you should know my thoughts about your opinion concerning the increasingly poor funding of Nigeria’s public universities; I agree that we are in a serious mess! However, our rulers (those you always refer to as ruiners) and their supporters appear to be ignorant of what a university is supposed to be. It seems that under-developing countries like Nigeria are just “copying and pasting” what they now call “universities” in their domains without well-defined means of achieving growth/developmental plans for them. Universities are now seen as places to only obtain certificates! Do you then blame those claiming that under-developing countries do not need universities? I now believe that those ruiners do not read or they do so haphazardly. Thus, they may not appreciate the content of your write-ups and those of others. With the many presentations in the dailies aimed at calling their attention to the degradation, it will be good enough if these cretins dump vain arrogance and do the correct needful.
Response: Some of the guys you referred to do read! The ones that do not and/or do not have the time to have appointed handlers who do it for them. They have information. They are current about things that are being talked about in society. No doubt they just do not care! Current experience with them should not be surprising because signs were there all along! Perhaps you were expecting too much from them. We have always resisted a range of elaborate deceptions by those duplicitous characters! Many of them supported/worked with military regimes in the past. Go into the archives and do background checks on them! They are plunderers! Nigeria is ensnared, unfortunately! Those you referred to as “rulers” do not see governance as a service platform but as a place to loot and dominate others. So if you ask questions or demand your rights, you are considered an enemy that must be crushed! They also see objective critics as people who are struggling to replace them in office to do exactly what they are currently doing there! That is just their mindset and it will continue like this until the people wake up. This is a major reason for efforts toward sensitising the masses to a never-ending awakeness regarding their rights, bearing in mind that they (the masses) have the right to sleep on their rights by continuing their deep sleep! It is not in doubt that it may take efforts and time before we start seeing any change for the good. We need not deceive ourselves; most politicians are the same in whatever political “party” they belong to! It is the way our system has been structured! So politicians need the electorate’s help by constantly flushing them out of power in cycles of “elections” because they (politicians) do not change overnight! If they know that the electorate is able and ready to constantly vote them out, they will start to change. Politicians today will only do the needful correctly once they realise that they can be voted out of office! For now, they are more powerful than the electorate! Therefore, the electorate should find good ways to assert themselves. It is that simple!
Anonymous: Let us face the fact; I want to believe that those who want to acquire tertiary education certificates (university, polytechnic, monotechnic, college, etc.) will do so irrespective of the cost. Many parents will pay the price to see their children/wards go through school. I can count a couple of my former students who sponsored themselves during their undergraduate training. Come to think of it, must everybody get educated in tertiary institutions such as the universities? We should face reality! I believe many can make it and be successful entrepreneurs from skills they can acquire elsewhere [from other institutions apart from universities]. If the Nigerian system also allows people to be relevant through informally acquired skills, then we will be talking about true progress/development in our national life.
Response: You have some points, but there are issues! Truly some people will go all the way to acquire certificates, but at what cost? To state the obvious, our tertiary educational institutions are in need of solid funding to be productive. So any serious government in under-developing countries cannot abandon this funding responsibility when other sources are unavailable. Although, at the rate Nigeria’s wealth is being plundered by thieves and marauders, public funding for education will continually be unsustainable! Certainly, we are not supporting the idea being mooted by Nigerian governments to privatise public universities! What we are saying is that the government should come out clear by involving stakeholders, including relevant trade unions, in engagements leading to sustainable funding for these institutions. These engagements should be sincere, purposeful, and open, unlike such other public matters with annoying secrecy always hovering around them! We have advocated that these institutions should be revitalised to a level where they can start attracting funding from other sources and places; a model adopted by some! The truth is: tertiary educational institutions, specifically universities, are not money-spinning entities in poor economies! Universities’ unquantifiable products that are of inestimable value require sustainable sound investments! These products, in most cases, are high-level human capacities, researches, innovations, and other associated products! The age-long retrogressive trend in which Nigerian governments perceive these institutions as places where they can generate revenue and also deliver “jobs for the boys” (e.g., external members of the Governing Councils, etc.) has to stop so that those that truly have genuine intentions on how to source for alternative funding are the ones that get attracted. It is not a secret that there are people in government at all levels complicit in the corruption alleged to be perpetrated in these higher institutions! Stealing may be occurring there (and those in government know), but as they are in cahoots over these alleged fraudulence, nothing happens to the thieves! It is deliberate deception all the way! What result is then being expected? Once all the loopholes are blocked and funding starts coming from other sources, nobody needs to tell anybody that these institutions may need less dependence on the government for funding! There are documented historical renditions on public universities overseas that showed that they were earlier solely funded by the government but, after putting things in place, gradually reduced their dependence on the government as the sole funder! Even as of today, their governments are still investing in and/or encouraging massive investments in their educational sector, noting that their need for education is different from ours! Governments should not be allowed to abandon public universities in Nigeria! This is very important as necessary wherewithal is not in place yet to a level where they can attract sustained alternative funding. Those former students you mentioned earlier might not have been able to sponsor themselves if what the federal government wants to do now was what was in place as of then! Now, how many of them are gainfully employed in Nigeria? The Nigerian government is talking about unavailable loans to students. Now look at the United States where, in May 2024, President Joe Biden’s administration cancelled $7.7 billion in federal student loans. With that action, the administration said it has cancelled $167 billion in student debt for nearly 5 million Americans through several programmes. This is wealthy USA with institutions! No wonder someone said colloquially that Nigeria’s governments still “dey play”.
Prof. Andrew A. Erakhrumen currently teaches at the Department of Forest Resources and Wildlife Management, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.
