27th April, 2015
There is so much to be done by the incoming administration to be inaugurated on 29 May, 2015.
In every facet of our national life there is so much decay that surgical operation will be needed to reverse the state of anomie. Although the power sector, the economy, security, infrastructure, health need the urgent attention of the President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, the education sector is in shambles and deserves special attention for its revival.
The criminal neglect of the education sector, especially at the tertiary level by successive governments in the past three decades, has left infrastructure in the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in ruins. This has impacted negatively on the staff and students of these tertiary institutions to the extent that lecturers have often embarked on labour disputes with the Federal Government, and in the case of state owned institutions of higher learning, the lecturers always have running battles with state governors. The perennial strikes by lecturers, some which last almost a whole academic session, have disrupted the academic calendars of most universities and students who ought to spend four years in the university have often ended up spending six or more years before graduating. These have also affected the standard of education adversely.
Things have degenerated so badly that most parents now send their children to Ghana to study in private universities at a very huge cost and this has resulted in capital flight. Most private universities in Nigeria have also capitalised on the decay in public tertiary institutions to fleece parents who send their children there. Most public owned tertiary institutions in Nigeria have become glorified secondary schools where students stand while receiving lectures because of lack of tables and chairs for them to sit on; female students bathe early in the morning in the open in their hostels because they don’t have bathrooms; male students defecate in the bush around their hostels since there are no conveniences.
To compound these woes, there are no laboratories for students to carry out practicals and libraries stock obsolete books that cannot enrich the knowledge of the students. In the end, these universities produce half-baked graduates that cannot be employed. Also, there is no funding for research by lecturers. It is for all these reasons and non payment of salaries of lecturers that the Academic Staff Union Universities, ASUU, has always been up in arms against the Federal Government.
Some universities such as Lagos State University, LASU, and Cross River State University of Technology, CRUTECH, are currently shut over labour and other disputes. The case of CRUTECH is so bad that the state owned university has been shut since last year because the Cross River State Government has not paid the lecturers. The entire academic session is in jeopardy as the students have remained at home for almost eight months now. Final year students cannot graduate or participate in the National Youth Service Corps scheme while new students and their parents have been left in the lurch.
Under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, this state of affairs in the nation’s universities, polytechnics and colleges of education must change. A nation that is serious about technological advancement cannot afford to toy with tertiary education as is the case today in Nigeria. There should be enough budgetary allocation to the education sector to address the age-long unacceptable neglect by government.