Quality or quantity in Nigerian universities?

Much has been said, much has been heard and many decisions have been deliberated upon in the process of taking the Nigerian education sector out of its sorry state; alas, little has been achieved, especially when it comes to tertiary education because the major stakeholders are not truthful in designing a roadmap for a world class education sector. The bitter truth is that it will continue to remain the same unless every stakeholder has a change of attitude. Change does not come by word of mouth, it happens by genuine purpose of mind, action and commitment.

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It is worrisome the rate at which the National Universities Commission (NUC) keeps doling out approvals for the establishment of new universities in every corner Nigeria. One is compelled to ask what the NUC is actually doing to improve the state of the existing ones. It is evident that university business is a booming enterprise today in Nigeria simply because the primary goal of many of these proprietors is not to produce world class graduates but to make name and money. If it were not so, the wife of a sitting president would not be nursing the ambition of establishing a private university in the name of her husband but would rather etch her name in gold in the annals of Nigerian history by diverting the foreign connections she talked about to our public universities.

It is very sad that Nigeria has gotten little or no place in the world university ranking over the years. It shows how backward our educational system is. Most of our leaders, politicians and government officials are holders of certificates of world class ivy-league schools, but they have brought nothing to the fore to help our education sector with their wealth of experience and exposure, they rather prefer to have a private university established through ill-gotten wealth.

Every year, we churn out graduates in thousands, if not millions, whose heads are filled with age long theories that have been abandoned by developed nations without the practical skills they need to unleash their potentials and face the realities of life. Education that does not steer the country’s economy towards prosperity is no education at all. Useless old theories in our university curriculum should be replaced with practical, technical and technological skills. When shall we stop using foreign hands and brains in constructing our roads and bridges? What is the usefulness of the Engineering departments in our universities?

We all should know that the number of universities a country has does not matter in its national development but the quality of those universities. The generation of our current leaders has, no doubt, failed the youths and so it behooves them to do the needful by repositioning university education in Nigeria, because posterity will judge.

Ishola Akintunde,

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