The Bauchi zonal coordinator of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Professor Namo Timothy, speaks with ISAAC SHOBAYO on a wide range of issues, including the state of education in Nigeria, the energy crisis, the succession crisis in Nigerian tertiary institutions, the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), among other issues.
WHAT is your assessment of the tertiary institution in Nigeria?
The federal government is not giving the desired attention to education in Nigeria. In the past three years, the funding pattern for the educational section has remained the same; UNESCO has recommended that at least six per cent of the total budget of any nation should be allocated to the educational sector. The highest in Nigeria in recent times has been 10 per cent, and this has continued to go down to as low as five per cent. This is not good for us as a nation. Any nation that wants to develop must invest in education instead of paying lip service to the funding.
Certainly, Nigeria is not among the nations that invest heavily in education; so there is the need for a change of heart. Our government should do the right thing to reposition the sector.
At the moment, there is an energy crisis in Nigerian tertiary institutions, precisely in the universities. Quite a lot of institutions have been thrown into darkness and activities paralysed as a result of this. What is the way out of this logjam?
For some time now, many universities have been experiencing blackouts. That means no meaningful research is being carried out in the sciences in virtually all the laboratories. There is the need for a constant supply of electricity [to ensure that experiments are carried out in the laboratories], but what we are experiencing now is a blackout or, in some cases, an epileptic supply of electricity. All the researches that are going on in the laboratories are affected; so, you can’t expect any serious research to be carried out in the midst of a total blackout. This is further worsened by the recent system where establishments are classified as Band A, B, and C in the power sector. Naturally, universities are categorised into Band A because they consume a lot of energy in the area of research and other services. So, many tertiary institutions cannot afford to pay for the consumed electricity because of poor funding and as a result, they have been experiencing total blackouts.
At the moment, some of the universities in the country have been disconnected by the electricity distribution companies…
(Cuts in) The answer still remains government should fund education properly. Universities should be given special attention. For example, one of the problems that have bedevilled the university in recent times and caused a lot of unrest among the staff unions in the university is the NEED Assessment that was conducted in 2012. The recommendation was that the government was going to inject 1.3 trillion naira into the tertiary education system. The government gave an initial sum of about N200 million and did not give anything after that. So, with this, you cannot expect the university to come out of the wood [as it is currently being witnessed].
But why is it difficult for the universities in Nigeria, especially the various faculties of engineering and electrical engineering, to think outside the box to find solutions to this energy crisis like their counterparts in other countries, at least, to generate the required electricity they would need on their own?
It is not that they cannot think outside the box. Since you want to implement innovative ideas, it costs money to do that. If somebody had initiated an idea and they wanted to carry out research in the laboratory and he needed it and there was no power, how do you expect that idea to translate into practical experimentation?
There is an insinuation by ASUU that the proposed Tax Reform Bill is designed in such a way to scrap the Tertiary Education Fund TETFund. What is your opinion on this?
I don’t know if you are aware of the press conference given by ASUU across the country recently. It was one of the issues that were raised. Part of that Tax Bill stipulated that TETFund will gradually phase out by 2030, while the Education Tax Fund that has been used to fund education through TETFund would no longer exist. That is, people will not be able to access the fund that is being generated in their areas. And this TETFund is actually the product that emerged as a result of the struggle by ASUU in 1992 when the government challenged ASUU to think of the way money would be generated to fund tertiary institutions since ASUU was insisting that school fees should not be introduced into the Nigerian university system. ASUU then said: why don’t you tax all these companies, [collect tax] from the profits generated by all the big companies in the country? Then the government accepted that two per cent of the profits generated by the multinational and other companies should be used to fund education. That is the genesis of the TETFund.
Today, the federal government wants to use that money that is being generated through that tax to fund what is being called the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), so by 2030, TETFund will cease to exist. You can imagine what will happen to all universities and other tertiary institutions across the country, which are majorly funded by TETFund. That is what the Tax Bill being proposed is all about.
But already some students in the country have started benefitting from the Students Loan Scheme and people are already applauding the government in this regard…
(Cuts in) It is of no benefit to anyone and [such a scheme] has never worked anywhere in the world. When you give students a loan, you expect that when they graduate and start working, they will be paying back the loan. And, in Nigeria, where there is no employment, where do you expect them to get the money to repay the loan? And all the students are qualified to get the loan anyway, but the majority of them will not get the loan. What it then translates into is that, with this NELFund and seizure of TETFund, many students will be out of the university, especially students from poor homes.
The educational and health sectors have been experiencing brain drain due to some obvious reasons. What is your perception of this, and where is the country likely to find itself within the next 10 years if this is not addressed by the authority concerned?
In fact, the government is not just unwilling to address the situation, they are encouraging the people that if you have the opportunity to jump out, jump out. That is what the government is saying. They are telling the young ones to go to wherever they can find a job. Tthat is, if you have the strength, jump out if you want to.
If they are being encouraged to jump out as you said, what happened to these critical sectors?
Have you been to the hospitals in recent times to see the patients and doctors ratio? Do you know the number of students a lecturer is teaching on average? I mean the students and teachers ratio? It is becoming appalling. And until our government sits up to address the situation, the situation will continue to degenerate.
What is the way out?
The way out is for Nigerians to cry out the way ASUU has been doing, to tell the government that all is not well with the country. They should rise up and tell the world that all is not well with Nigeria.
The negotiation between the federal government and ASUU is still dragging on without any solution. What is the position of things at the moment?
The lingering issues have not been resolved. The government set up a team to discuss with us. The team had discussion with us. And they have gone back to the government. Do you know that currently in Kenya, the private schools are closing down and public schools are beginning to thrive? The reason being that the government has decided to inject more money into public schools; the standard has been upgraded, and parents are beginning to withdraw their children from private schools. The government of Kenya acted fast on this because they knew that the citizenry there would not give them rest until they did the right thing.
In spite of the economic hardship in the country and the cry that existing federal universities in Nigeria are underfunded, the government keeps establishing more universities. What is the implication of this?
ASUU has over the years been shouting about the proliferation of tertiary institutions in Nigeria without any commitment to fund them properly. The ones that are already on the ground have not been funded properly; there are no facilities; there is no infrastructure, and yet you are opening new ones. We have been telling them to expand the old ones on ground and properly fund them so that they can expand the admission quota. You are opening new ones without any commensurate funding. This is a bad approach. We cannot achieve anything, especially within the educational sector, with this kind of arrangement.
Do you think government is playing politics with the establishment of more universities?
All these new universities are constituency projects of politicians. Every politician wants a university in his constituency, local government, and in his village if it is possible.
But some people will argue that the establishment of these universities is another way of creating jobs for the teeming youths and also opening up more avenues for Nigerians to have access to university education?
University is not a primary school; it is a serious business. You don’t just build two classrooms or structures in any place and call it a university. Go to Ghana and other West African countries to see what university is all about. In Nigeria, some secondary schools are being converted to universities without any structure in place. All these universities cannot compare and/or compete with their counterparts in other parts of the world.
Why is it that universities in the country are often bedevilled by crisis anytime there is going to be a change of guard or appointment of the new vice chancellor?
The Miscellaneous Act, which ASUU fought for, states clearly the guidelines for transition from one administration to another in Nigerian universities. If those guidelines are properly followed, there would be no crisis. But there are always interferences in who becomes what. Some people believe that the vice chancellor of a university must come from their ethnic group where the university is cited, which was not the case in the 70s and 80s into the early 90s, where the best were often selected. But today, the whole thing has been politicised. Today, if someone, who is not from the area where the university is located, is appointed, it brings crisis. If the Miscellaneous Act is strictly followed, there would be no crisis in Nigerian universities.
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