The seven-year moratorium on new higher institutions

LAST week, as if waking up from slumber, the Federal Government imposed a seven-year moratorium on the establishment of new federal universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, citing the proliferation of underutilised institutions, overstretched resources, and a drop in academic quality. Ironically, this was just as it approved the establishment of nine new private universities across the country. The new universities are Tazkiyah University, Kaduna State; Leadership University, Abuja; Jimoh Babalola University, Kwara State; Bridget University, Mbaise, Imo State; Greenland University, Jigawa State; JEFAP University, Niger State; Azione Verde University, Imo State; Unique Open University, Lagos State; and American Open University, Ogun State. Announcing the government’s decision while briefing State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja, the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, said the challenge in Nigeria’s tertiary education system was no longer access but inefficient duplication, poor infrastructure, inadequate staffing, and dwindling enrollment in many existing institutions. He stated that the moratorium would enable the government to channel resources into upgrading facilities, hiring qualified staff, and expanding the carrying capacity of existing institutions.  He said: “If we want to improve quality and not be a laughing stock globally, the pragmatic step is to pause the establishment of new federal institutions.”

According to the minister, the Tinubu administration inherited 551 pending requests for the establishment of tertiary institutions, which were subjected to stricter approval guidelines. This, he said, reduced the list to 79 active applications, out of which nine were cleared after meeting the criteria.  Many of the approved universities, he said, had been awaiting accreditation for over six years, with their promoters having already built campuses and invested billions of naira. He lamented: “Several federal universities operate far below capacity, with some having fewer than 2,000 students. In one northern university, there are 1,200 staff serving fewer than 800 students. This is a waste of government resources.” Alausa added that 199 universities received fewer than 100 applications through the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) last year, with 34 recording zero applications, while many of the 295 polytechnics nationwide had fewer than 99 applicants, and 219 Colleges of Education also posted poor enrollment figures, including 64 with no applications at all. He warned that unchecked proliferation of poorly subscribed institutions risked producing ill-prepared graduates, eroding the value of Nigerian degrees internationally, and worsening unemployment.

No doubt, the proliferation of institutions of higher learning without world classs facilities, teaching staff and cutting edge research has served Nigeria very poorly over the years. It is no exaggeration to say that many of the so-called institutions are more or less glorified secondary schools. They are not fit for purpose. And the bulk of the blame should go to the government, which over the years had hobbled the very essence of universities and other higher institutions through cronyism and patronage. People and organisations received licenses to establish institutions not because they genuinely deserved to but because they had access to the levers of power. Today, because of the criminally lax regulatory climate, for instance, nearly every religious institution wants to own a university. Universities have become status symbols and a means of asserting authority and presence in the socioeconomic landscape even when there is hardly any overarching philosophy that resembles anything progressive or development-oriented. It is, for want of a better phrase, a means of saying that “If you can have a university, I too can, and so you cannot shakara (have any leverage over) me.” And these degree mills, often run essentially like concentration camps,  merely churn out graduates as a matter of duty. The situation is so bad that universities are even said to be established in order to launder money.

Many of the private varsities depend on the staff of public varsities, and that is the situation down the ladder.  This means, then, that the approving authorities need to change their orientation. They need to be up and doing, not merely sitting back and validating the  craze to establish  universities, colleges and polytechnics. It is saddening that even governments tend to use the establishment of varsities and other institutions as constituency projects, and rename them at a whim. Besides,  many of the existing private universities don’t even have enough students, and are barely able to survive. Against this backdrop, we believe that the step taken by the Federal Government is in the right direction. We are, however, unable to give any commendation, because we are yet to see genuine commitment to the cause of education. In any case, the history of federal and state governments in the country easily erodes any optimism, even a cautious one. This is a country which, following independence, had universities that attracted students and faculty from around the world. Today, the institutions are only a little better than carcasses of their former selves. They remain perennially underfunded and badly managed.

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No doubt, Minister Alausa said the right things. But Nigerians are used to hearing the right things and seeing only the wrong things. If the government wants to be taken seriously, it must change the face of education in the country. It must back rhetoric with concrete action and restore the dignity of education in the country. And even when it does that, its actions will have to be complemented by the state governments for Nigeria’s higher education landscape to change, develop, serve Nigeria’s developmental quest, and acquire global prestige.