Bogoro laments poor funding of education

A STATISTICAL table of cross-country comparison of percentage of budget allocation to education against the national budget (World Bank 2022) has shown that smaller African countries are far ahead of Nigeria in the funding of education, a former executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND), Professor Suleiman Bogoro, has disclosed.

Bagoro who spoke on Monday at the 44th convocation lecture of the University of Benin (UNIBEN) said that it is worrisome that though Nigeria ranks 20th in the world in budgetary allocation to education, dwindling budgetary allocation for the poor, and abysmal performance of Nigeria’s universities still remain the bane of Nigeria’s education.

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Professor Bagoro who spoke on the theme: ‘Ivory Towers and the Challenge of Nigeria’s Innovative and Creative Renaissance’ lamented that poor funding of institutions has resulted in poor human capital and half-baked graduates produced by the various universities across the country.

Budgetary allocation of countries like Uganda, 27.0% per cent (4th), Botswana, 20.0 per cent (10th), Lesotho, 17.0 per cent (14th) and Burkina Faso, 16.8 per cent (15th) respectively is higher than Nigeria’s 8.4 per cent (20th position in world) in the ranking of education funding.

The former TETFund chief added that universities and centres of excellence are not just institutions, but are considered the foundation of other national institutions, since they are the bastions of innovations, creativity, inventions, highest level of training and knowledge acquisition, strategies and quality control.

Bogoro, however, said that all hope is not lost, and called for a rebirth in the allocation of funds to the country’s tertiary institutions.

He said: “The trend can be reversed, and we in the Ivory Towers have a leading role to to play to help in ensuring that we mold and sustain qualitative and human capital through compliance with the statutory mandate to our universities and other tertiary institutions by maintaining the high standards prescribed in our laws, as well as improvement of working environment that will guarantee the quality of our graduates and research outcomes.

“We must, as a people, accept to elevate human capital development to the level of international best practice which has been responsible for the higher competitiveness of the strongest economies, technologies and military powers of the new millennium.

“We should, through research and powerful advocacy in campuses, seize the initiative of promoting strong institutions, rather than strong men, rulers or personalities, as the veritable foundation for governance.”