Being a keynote address delivered by Larry Jones-Esan, the Director of Studies at the

London Academy for Higher Education, Stratford, London

on 29th March 2007 on the occasion of 25th Convocation Ceremony of the
University of Ado-Ekiti.

Organized by V C Professor I .O Orubulye.

I congratulate the following distinguished guests:

l The Vice- Chancellor
l The Deputy Vice- Chancellor
l The Registrar, The Bursar
l The University Librarian
l Dean of Faculties
l Other Principal Officers of the University
l All Academic and non Academic Staff
l Students, All guests
l Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen

PREAMBLE

I thank you most sincerely for giving me the singular honour of delivering this very important lecture at this time in the history of educational development process in Nigeria.

Let me seize this opportunity to pay tribute to all those who have served this university meritoriously since 1982/83 to date, since it was established as Obafemi Awolowo University by the civilian administration of old Ondo state headed by the Late Chief Adekunle Ajasin, and later changed to Ondo State University in 1984 and now University of Ado-ekiti.

I am quite proud of the great strides that have been reported by the administration of the incumbent VC and the board of Governors. More grease to your elbows!

Ladies and gentlemen, although I am living abroad, my heart and soul is with Nigeria, and whatever I will say now will be solely in the interest of education in our great country. Let me bring to your notice incredible fact which has not done justice to our international image.

The time of truth has come. If you are genuinely concerned about your chosen profession, the quality of your degrees, quality of teachers and quality of our universities, the products of our universities, and the reputation of this country, you must be worried and indeed ashamed that the quality of our university is so poor to the extent that none of our universities was ranked amongst the first 5,000 in the world.

This can easily be verified by simply logging unto the internet and confirm the ‘latest World University rankings’! [http://www.webometrics.info/top100_continent.asp?cont=Africa]

Do you know also, that no Nigerian university is ranked among the first 40 in Africa? Obafemi Awolowo University, the highest ranking University in Nigeria is ranked number 44 in Africa and 5,834 in the world, while University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier university is ranked number 66 in Africa and 6,809 in the world.

With this current ranking, several universities based in South Africa, as well as other African countries that are not as endowed as Nigeria in financial and human resources (like Zimbabwe, Botswana, Senegal, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Namibia, and even Rwanda and Somalia!) are ranked ahead of Nigeria. Even the Polytechnic of Namibia is ranked number 32 in Africa!

Only 4 Nigerian Universities were ranked among the top 100 in Africa as follows
This shameful statistics contrasts badly with the position in the 70s when Nigerian schools attracted the best brains from Europe and the USA. That was the time our own UCH (i.e. the University College Hospital, Ibadan was ranked among the best 5 in the commonwealth. That is now history. But how did we get to where we find ourselves today?

I have summarised the problems as stated below:

The problem of JAMB admitting poor students.
The Quality of Students Produced from Secondary School
The scrapping of HSC/A-Levels
Human Resource scarcity. In other words, brain drain.
Indiscipline. i.e. reported cases of unethical practices of teachers
Incessant strikes
Funding constraints

My lecture today shall be concentrating on ways of finding means of encouraging Public-Private sector partnership in funding education in Nigeria.

UNIVERSITY FUNDING IN NIGERIA BEFORE 1999

Before the advent of democracy in 1999, Nigeria was governed continuously by the military for 15 years i.e. 1984 to 1999.

The period can best be described as ‘the period of locust, caterpillar and cankerworms’ as far as education is concerned. The military governments were budgeting up to 40% for defence at the expense of education.

Mind you, this was a period when Nigeria was at peace, not war!

The period was typified by mass exodus of Nigeria’s best brains in the academics. Most of the Universities Human Resources that were trained in the best universities in the UK and the USA in the 1960’s and 1970’s via government scholarships, were forced to relocate back to the western world where their talents are better appreciated and rewarded.

Any lecturer whose views are considered too radical were sacked. A good example is the case of Professor Patrick Wilmot, a Jamaican, Yale-trained expert in the field of sociology at the Ahmadu Bello University who was forcibly abducted by the Nigerian Police and deported to the UK in 1988 by the General Ibrahim Babangida government because his views were considered radical.

No wonder that Prof. Phillip Emeagwali, a Nigerian referred to by the CNN as ‘the father of the internet’ said in one of his speeches that ‘one-third of any amount spent by the developing country on education is actually being spent to subsidise the western world’.

The unenviable legacies inherited by the Obasanjo’s civilian government in May 1999 include the following:

Unpaid pensions and gratuities for retired university staff which run into several billions of Naira.

Shortage of highly skilled manpower required in the university system.

Irregular academic sessions due to incessant strikes.

salaries and other remuneration paid to lecturers and professors, which do not compare favourably with what their colleagues earn elsewhere;

Hostels which are in pitiable conditions.

College buildings including lecture rooms and offices which need refurbishment;

Libraries which are poorly equipped and are in need of modern books and equipment;

Laboratory equipment which are obsolete and are calling for modernisation;

Campus roads which are in state of disrepair.

Electricity, though a national problem (which students do not accept) which is in short supply. Generators which need replacement; and

Water supply which in most cases is inadequate.

Having regard to the factual situation in our universities, it is no wonder that non of our universities qualified to be placed in the first 6,000 universities in the world!!

The question we must ask ourselves is “why have things gone so bad”?

The answer is that the 26 Federal Universities and 26 State Universities are creations of the government and are funded by the government. In fact, many state universities are not much better than secondary schools and compared unfavourably with Olashore International Secondary School. The bitter truth, which the populists did not want to hear, is that Nigeria remains one of the few countries where by and large education is funded by the government.

Nigeria present a classical study in over dependence on government for the provision of virtually everything. Total dependence on government for the provision of everything has not, is not and will never solve our problems.

Nigerian have been made to believe that all they have to do is to sit a home, produce children and donate them to the government to nurture, maintain, train and educate. Nigerians want free medical treatment, subsidised food, good roads, cheap electricity, free water, free education etc.

With the huge damage done to all sectors of the economy by the military and the need to revive each and every sector simultaneously, it will be unreasonable to expect that government would pump all its resources to our University education alone.

Time has come when Nigeria must face the reality of its economic and financial circumstances and do what others elsewhere do to propel their universities to institutions of national relevance, capable of fulfilling their national aspirations.

Recently, the 13 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries reviewed Higher Education funding. It concluded as follows:

Tuition fees are becoming the international rule and not the exception. Eight of the 13 OECD main competitor countries analysed in this paper charge tuition fees of some sort. All of these eight bar Netherlands vary their fees to some extent.

In Canada, tuition fees are paid and they are on the rise. In Australia, differential fees are paid on the basis of income. For Japan, with effect from 2000, state universities would be allowed to have greater autonomy and, more importantly, they have freedom to set their own tuition fee levels, and national Universities fees are set at £2,700. In China, fees are set according to market conditions taking into account both costs and demand.

In America, fees at public and private institutions are rising by an average of 14.1 per cent from 2002 - 2003 to 2003 - 2004 at public institutions. Overall, the spilt is between public universities - which charge around $5,000 - $15,000 (£2,900 - £8,600) per year depending on location, type and length of course; and private universities where fees can be as high as $30,000 (£17,300) per year.

In England, fees in universities is now £6,000 per year i.e. N750, 000. [At London Academy for Higher Education, we charge far less than the quoted figure for excellent service]

In Nigeria, there were wide protests that the N90 hostel fee charged since 1985 should not be increased. The Committee of Registrars of Nigerian Universities had sent a memo to government on this matter in 1996.

The first of the solution then proposed was to request universities to provide a professional accounting that would show what it costs exactly to provide its services.

This means that it will be possible to determine what it costs to educate a medical student at the University of Ado-Ekiti. Now if the government says anyone who goes for Law undergraduate programme needs not pay, what it means is that the government is disbursing to the university exactly what it costs the university to provide the service for each student. Otherwise, both government and University authorities are engaged in a murderous game of make-belief for the training of Lawyers.

The Registrars’ suggested solutions in 1996 are still valid today and are based on the following principles:

Parents who can pay fees should be made to pay instead of declaring a tuition free university policy, which do not match with commensurate financial backing;

no student who qualifies for admission should be denied higher education merely by his/her inability to pay fees;

all tiers of government from Local Council to Federal Government should be part of the fee-paying process;

the private sector should be allowed to be part of the scheme.

Guidelines suggested by the Registrars for the implementation of these principles are as follows.

The Federal Government may provide Scholarships on merit to say 30 per cent of those who properly gain admission to the university, to cover 100 per cent of tuition. Tuition will of course be different from institution to institution as indicated above. Additional loans may be granted to cover a proportion of other cost of living and books, while parents or guardians take care of the rest, which will be minimal;

again, scholarships may be granted up to 75 per cent of tuition for the next 30 per cent on merit. And additional loans may be granted to cover another segment of the cost of living and books.

state government should also follow suit by granting scholarships and loans according to their own criteria to cover the remaining 40 per cent of the population of admitted students from their states.

local councils may grant scholarships and loans to indigenous students from their local council communities. Local authorities are best at determining criteria for indigence and membership of a local council.

the Federal Government may again grant scholarships and loans to those from disadvantaged areas who have not been adequately covered by point 1-4 above.

universities themselves may grant scholarships based on their own criteria.

These suggestions deserve urgent attention. Unless the funding of federal and state universities is properly and frontally addressed, the education sector is doomed.

It is significant to note that foreign students coming to Nigeria prefer private universities to federal or state universities. The obvious reasons include the fact that the university calendar is scrupulously adhered to, there is greater discipline among teachers and students.

THE WAY FORWARD: PUBLIC- PRIVATE SECTOR PARTNERSHIP IN FUNDING UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

Nigerians of today believe only in receiving but not in giving. Nigerians believe only in give me, give me, give me but will never like to part with anything.

The Europeans and Americans believe in the philosophy of give and take in the establishment and funding of universities. Most universities were founded through gifts and endowments. Most are funded by philanthropists, the Alumni, the community and endowment. Members of the community also donate heavily or through wills which come in form of shares, buildings, or money to universities. This was how the great universities in medieval era were founded and funded. Harvard University and Cambridge University, which are rated as numbers one and two in the latest ranking in the world were not founded by government and do not depend for its administration on government funding.

In Harvard University, Endowment fund was valued at $22.6 billion at the end of January 2005 whereas Nigeria’s external reserve is only $40 billion.

During the fiscal year 2005 the Harvard University income totalled $2,228,200,000. The breakdown of the income of the university that year is as follows:

l Student income - 23 per cent
l Endowment income distributed - 28 per cent
l Income from other investments - 5 per cent
l Current use-gifts - 7 per cent
l Other operating income - 14 per cent
l Sponsored research support - 23 per cent

l PRIVATE FUNDING OF RESEARCH GRANTS

This is an area in which Nigerian Public Limited Companies have performed so poorly over the years. Nigerian companies rarely fund research and development programmes whose results are designed to benefit themselves.

The country has been suffering the negative effects of irregular power supplies for several years now, whereas smaller African countries like Ghana have been able to surmount the problem.

These and many more problems can be overcome by spending on research to find local solutions to national problems.

No wonder we are always importing technologies!

What is research funding?

Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of both “hard” science and technology, and social science. The term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most promising receive funding. Such processes, which are run by government, corporations or foundations, allocate scarce funds. Total research funding in most developed countries is between 1.5% and 3% of GDP; Sweden is the only country to exceed 4%. What is research funding policy in Nigeria of today?

The past century leading to the new millennium has brought about unprecedented growth and development in technological terms to the world. As a result of this, unparalleled advancements have been achieved in all spheres of life.

We have seen computers changing the world’s outlook with the advent of the internet; we have seen missions to space to conduct indispensable experiments aimed at solving the world’s problems in a broad range of fields such as medicine, and so on.

Communication for example, is so easy that discussing business with somebody in New York takes a matter of seconds. Only fifty years ago those who predicted this were laughed at and seen as mad dreamers, well we know today they were oh so right.

While we marvel at the virtues of technological development, the reality though is that Africa is unfortunately and gradually being left behind by the advancing wave of this development.

In Nigeria, for example, scientists, technologists and engineers are not venturing into the academic ranks while key researchers in these areas are expected to retire in no time. To put this into perspective, let us take a look at the following statistics: corporate bodies in South Africa spends 0.7% of GDP on Research and Development in 2005. In the EU expenditure is at 2%; 2.8% in the USA and 3% in Japan (http://europa.eu.int/en/record/white/c93700/ch4_1.html).

The number of researchers per 1000 of the working population is 0.00 (Nigeria); 0.71 (South Africa); 4.84 (Australia); 0.3 (Malaysia); 2.77 (South Korea). In the developed world there are 4 out of every 1 000 of the working population in the EU; 8 in the USA and 9 in Japan. The question then is what should Nigeria do to boost its technological research and development strategies?

In line with the recent Federal government reform programmes of encouraging private sector-led economy, it is indisputable that this trend can only be reversed by a government policy or initiative which will compel Nigerian Public Limited Companies to set aside a certain percentage of the annual profits to fund research and development programmes in our universities. This fund should be allowable for tax purposes.

At the end of the day, it is the larger society, including these companies that will reap the benefits which will accrue in the following forms:

Tax holidays; since corporate spending on research and developments are usually allowed for tax purposes.

Growth of the Nigerian economy as new products and processes that can be adapted to our peculiar environment will be developed.

As a result of home-developed products and processes, scarce foreign exchange spent on acquiring foreign technologies will be saved.

Our universities will be the major beneficiary as the best brains in the world will be attracted to, and retained by our schools.

To the companies, research and development spendings is an investment and they reap bountifully when developed products are successfully marketed.

As the Government has recorded some level of success in the administration of the annual proceed of the 2% education tax levied on companies, I am sure that a similar initiative on research and development will power our drive for growth and development.
Privately-funded research is more efficient

Findings in the USA has shown that privately-funded research is more effecient than Government-funded research. An often-quoted example used to illustrate the difference in efficiency between government-funded and privately funded research projects is the quest of mapping the human genome.

The U.S. government was funding such a mission, called the Human Genome Project, while at the same time the quest was being pursued separately with private venture capital by Celera Genomics. Celera Genomics used a newer, albeit riskier technique and proceeded at a faster pace and at a fraction of the cost of the tax-funded project (approximately $3 billion of taxpayer dollars versus about $300 million of private funding). Some Human Genome Project researchers claimed Celera’s method of genome sequencing “would not work,” however that project eventually adopted some of Celera’s methods.

It is indisputable that this trend can be reversed in this great continent if we invest in focused research and technological developmental strategies. Such (research and technological development) has the potential to bring growth to (not only Nigeria, but) Africa’s economy, decrease unemployment levels and strengthen its competitiveness to the rest of the world. This can only be achieved if there is cooperation between governments, industry and universities.

Fortunately, there is a general recognition of this, for example in South Africa, President Mbeki has suggested that “…we have to exert maximum effort to train the necessary numbers of our people in all the fields required for the development, running and management of modern economies. This again must be a national effort in which we should consider the necessary expenditures not as a cost but as an investment in our future” (S.A.’s National Research and Development Strategy, 2002).

Further, he pointed out “… we have to ensure that as many of our people as possible master modern technologies and integrate them in their social activities, including education, delivery of services and economic activity. This relates in particular to communication and information technology.”

To accomplish these it is necessary that government and industry should work in unison with universities in ensuring that essential funding and support are provided.

Clearly, well trained effective scientists, engineers and technologists could effectively be produced by universities in this region. This however, requires that universities collaborate in many spheres. For example, sharing resources (equipment and faculty); avoiding duplication which may be a source of unnecessary competition, and so on.

A number of factors need to be considered though. Government and industry need to invest meaningfully in what universities are engaged in. Clearly defined national goals that spell out each component’s (Government, Industry and Universities) role in the attainment of technological advancement have to be drawn. With obstacles such as these taken care of, it will be much easier for universities to structure collaborative strategies to ensure technological development in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole.

It is important therefore that universities in this region should be provided with a conducive environment in which to operate.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

From this discourse, the following are the salient points to be noted:
the quality of our education has been seriously battered through the admission of poor materials;
the question of the performance or non-performance of JAMB is just one aspect of the myriad of problems confronting our education system;

the quality of the products of our secondary school students seeking admission and/or admitted to our universities is very low;

there is the imperative need to address quickly and decisively our education system from primary level to tertiary level; the entire education curriculum in elementary and secondary schools must be revisited, improved upon in line with modern trends and reality of our time;

formal training of teachers should be emphasised particularly for elementary and secondary schools; higher school certificate awarding institutions (basic studies) should be revived while emphasis should henceforth be on direct entry to universities through possession of HSC thereby obviating the need to take JAMB examination.

Salaries and emoluments of teachers, lecturers and professors should be enhanced for optimal performance.

Discipline should not only be observed but enforced in all ramifications;
the trend all over the world, including USA, England, China, Japan, Australia is to allow universities to charge fees while government continues to provide a percentage of the university expenses;
the question of funding has to be addressed frankly and honestly without any iota of sentiments, political or otherwise;

We would be deceiving ourselves and inflicting an avoidable havoc on our educational system should we believe that government can do and should fund all the expenses of our federal and state universities;

The practice all over the world is now co-operative funding involving all organs an stakeholders;
students with exceptional academic performances whether from rich or poor homes are entitled to full scholarship;

the children of the poor should not be denied university education. They are entitled to one form of assistance or the other including free tuition, bursary, scholarship or loan as is practised in civilised countries.

fees payable should be graduated. In other words, the parents of rich students should pay full university fees, students from average homes would pay less while students with poor background should not pay fees;
alumni and endowment and contributions from big companies should play more prominent role as practised in civilised countries;

SUGGESTIONS

My humble suggestion is that the Honourable Minister should invite each university including Alumni and Parents, Teachers Association (PTA) to submit papers on Education reform to a Committee of stakeholders appointed by her. Our university should immediately set up a committee to draft proposals to be submitted to the Honourable Minister.
Some of the areas crying for reform, which should be addressed, include:

Primary and secondary schools curriculum;
training of teachers;

The need for re-introduction of Higher School Certificate (HSC)/A levels;

HSC as direct entry for admission;

Amendment outright proscription of JAMB law;

Amendment of University Act;

Strikes;

Education as essential service;

Co-operative funding of universities;

Independence of private universities and issue of standard;

Government in conjunction with other stakeholders should consider the idea of a 10-year development plan

Funding of the university system should be liberalised with corporate bodies and parents playing more important roles.

Education Tax fund Act should be amended by compelling corporate bodies to fund research and development work in our universities.

APPENDIX 1:

Higher Education Funding Council for England summary of 2006-07 grant tables

APPENDIX 2:

http://www.webometrics.info/top100_continent.asp?cont=africa

APPENDIX 1

Higher Education Funding Council for England summary of 2006-07 grant tables

Thank you for your attention

By Larry Jones-Esan - Director of Studies

London Academy for Higher Education