FG is shortchanging private universities – Prof. Leonard-Fwa

People believe that the standard of education in Nigeria is on the decline, what is your take on that?I am not someone who believes that our educational standard is declining. What is happening in Nigeria is that our policy makers have failed in addressing the issue of education in Nigeria. We have severally talked about […]

People believe that the standard of education in Nigeria is on the decline, what is your take on that?
I am not someone who believes that our educational standard is declining. What is happening in Nigeria is that our policy makers have failed in addressing the issue of education in Nigeria. We have severally talked about policies on education and I will tell you in the language of the common man that there is policy somersault in Nigeria today. We are yet to sit as a people to ask what our children want. What we did was to take hook, line and sinker what the colonial masters have given us and what they brought basically was for us to read and write for them to be able to transact with us. Emphasis is placed on paper qualification. If you don’t have a degree, diploma, masters, you are not known to be an educated person. Yet, today, students are more educated than we are because they are more scientific, and can operate every gadget to get whatever is happening around the world via just a laptop and computer system. Every young child is given an education that he so deserves and what we give them is the measure of what we take, so you can’t say there is a decline in our education. Our policies are becoming archaic, until our policy makers are able to fashion out policies that will give students the use of their heads and hands, we will continue to speak that language that our education standard is falling.
What are the major challenges of private universities?
The number one is inadequate funding. University is a very big venture, there is overhead cost. If you are running a full fledged university like we do, for instance, if you are running medicine, health sciences, you need to have certain machines put in place. We are paying N21, 000 million ground rents, yearly, to Nasarawa State and we also pay light bills and we spend over N5m on diesel every eight weeks. So anyone who is saying that private university is a profit making body is wrong. We are barely at a breaking position. Secondly, government needs to allow private universities a level playing ground because we produce graduates that will go to the same market and government parastatals with public university graduates to work. Finally, I will say that one of the major problems with the private university is also the treatment that we get from the public universities professors that come to do assessment. Sometimes they don’t give the right report. They also assume that we should have the same building and environment that they have in the government-owned university. Averagely, the federal government is paying N2.4m for a student, yearly, because they pay 80 per cent and the students about 20 per cent of all fees. But here, the student pays 100 per cent, averagely N500, 000 yearly. Until the professors stop trying to equate private and public universities, the private universities will continue to have it bad.
Many Nigerian students are going abroad for study, as an educationist what does that portend for us?
If you are an average Nigerian, you cannot send your child to school in the UK because the fee is high. The accommodation fee and upkeep allowance, together, will be about N15 million per annum. But you will not blame people who are sending their children abroad because they need their children to have practical knowledge of whatever it is. The standard of education in Nigeria and the UK differs. We have refused to do the right thing, so every parent that has the wherewithal will want his child out of the country. There is also the incessant strike in Nigerian education system, addressing all these will give us the right solution.
Can the increasing number of private universities in the country address the issue of foreign trips for study?
The private universities have been shortchanged by the federal government. If the private universities are given even 10 per cent of what the public universities are getting, they would have reduced their costs and employed capable professors who will do better in private university than public. They are rushing to public universities because of security of their job. The private sector pay tax and the federal universities are sponsored. I think this disparity has become a major issue today, give the private universities 10 per cent of what the public universities are getting and we will lower cost of education, produce better graduates who will go out and do the nation proud.