Pro-chancellors seek full autonomy for varsities

THE Committee of Pro-chancellors of Nigerian federal universities has renewed its call on the Federal Government to grant full autonomy to Nigerian universities for them to function more effectively.

Professor Kimse Okoko, the chairman of the committee, who spoke with Nigerian Tribune in Abuja, insisted that if universities were granted full autonomy, they would function better and the recurrent issues of strike actions and agitations by staff unions would have been resolved.

Speaking at the sideline of the CPC 2017 conference, however, said the issue of university of autonomy was not new as the conference and other relevant stakeholders had been on it for many years without reasonable success.

He said part of the challenge remains the funding problem, and that this has been aggravated by the current economic recession.

Professor Okoko  noted that even though there were ongoing efforts by tertiary institutions to generate funds internally in order to bridge infrastructural development gap, this could only complement autonomous funding arrangement for the institutions.

“We are encouraging our experts in our universities to get involved in publications, so as to increase research collaborations leading to development, and, thereby, increase internally generated revenue base of the universities.

“There is a need for full university autonomy in our system. We have discussed this for many years and we have achieved nothing,” he noted.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, has challenged the Committee of pro-chancellors to come up with a framework for the funding of tertiary education to augment the statutory sources.

Represented at the event by Mrs Fatima Ahmad, the Director Tertiary Education, Federal Ministry of Education, the minister also said that poor deployment of information communications technology in the education sector was responsible for slow migration from traditional classrooms to smart classrooms.

Adamu said, “Resource constraint is a challenge we are facing. However, the reality for now is the effective and efficient management of all resources available –human, material or financial.

“With the present drive for global comparability and harmonisation of tertiary education qualifications, ICT deployment is a must feature in our educational institutions. The current deployment is low, and most education officials lack ICT skills.

“There is also a shortage of ICT personnel across the nation. Issues of broadband and power outages are constraining factors that government is trying to address. However, we must look out for alternative support, because government cannot do it alone,” he said