‘Nigerians need equitable access to higher education’

A lot of factors have been presented as responsible for the declining standard of education in the country, ranging from poor education policy, inadequate funding and poor quality administrative and reform work at the country’s tertiary education level.The former minister of education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmad Rufa’i, in a paper she presented at the 2nd annual […]

A lot of factors have been presented as responsible for the declining standard of education in the country, ranging from poor education policy, inadequate funding and poor quality administrative and reform work at the country’s tertiary education level.
The former minister of education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmad Rufa’i, in a paper she presented at the 2nd annual conference of the Association of West African Universities (AWAU) in Ghana recently, commented on the state of education in African countries.
She noted that university education in Nigeria plays a crucial role in generating new ideas and in accumulating and transmitting knowledge, yet it has remained peripheral to the development concerns.
Prof. Rufa’i said as societies seek to advance using education as the primary tool and that the surest way of achieving that is by providing access to education, stressing that this will allow adequate preparation of citizens by the system to address the challenges of society.  
She said there must be opportunities for every group in the society to access education, noting that “gender, culture, social standing, disability or other issues should not stand in the way of access to education for everyone.  Every member of society must be given the opportunity to excel.”
She explained that higher education is a key to achieving national development objectives and that assuring quality will enhance the ability of the products of the education system to serve the interest of the society better.
According to her, our tertiary institutions are faced with challenges of access, equity and quality of higher education in the quest to meet up to producing highly-skilled individuals for national development
She stated that 1.6 million candidates apply each year for admission into tertiary institutions and only about one third of them are absorbed into the universities.
On the challenges of higher education, Rufa’i observed that physical infrastructure, staff recruitment and retention, teaching and learning resources, relationship with needs of society, economic conditions and carrying capacity of institutions are mostly faced in most universities in Africa.
“The dearth of quality academic staff is reflected in the Nigerian academic environment where over 50% of the academic staff in tertiary institutions have no doctoral degrees,” she said, adding that apart from government efforts in improving access to higher education, our educational institutions must look closely at their local environment and ensure that it served their interests in terms of education as well as inclusion.
However, to address the effect of family economic conditions on access and equity in higher education, the government and institutions also need to put in place support mechanisms to attract certain groups of students, she said.  
She implored that financial support initiatives should be used to ensure that students from poor backgrounds are able to participate in higher education.  
“Right from secondary school, there is the need to identify bright students whose progress could be hampered by prevailing personal economic situations. Institutions also need to encourage enrolment of under-represented groups by making special provisions for them,” she suggested.
Quality is crucial, for it is the basis for transforming our citizens into assets for society. In the light of this, our institutions must pay attention to ensuring that they have access to those infrastructure and resources to help in producing world-class individuals, Prof. Rufa’i also said.  
She said increasing investment in education and special intervention funds will help in achieving the goals of having quality higher education.
“We must continuously ensure equitable access to higher education because every citizen has something positive to offer to society. This is only possible if society helps them in developing the necessary skills through education,” she said.
Another educationist and a lecturer at the University of Abuja, Dr. U. A. Ndagi said funding is one of the major problems facing education at the higher level in Nigeria.
“I don’t know if we are matured for the autonomy granted for the universities because it appears so far that the policy looks like a sword with two edges. It would have been good if perhaps the universities are using it well but unfortunately because of politics and corruption that is so pervasive in all our systems in Nigeria, “You will discover that the autonomy is being used to ruin the university system. For instance, the autonomy allows the universities to appoint and deal with vice chancellors and university staff but you discover that useless people get to these positions. Before we were accusing government that they are appointing people who do not qualify, now that the autonomy is granted we expected only that qualified people should come to the universities but you discover that it has become subverted by corruption and politics,” he said.
The don added: “I don’t know if the autonomy is good for higher education in Nigeria, because of the incompetent staff there. The autonomy also empowers council to dismiss but such people will remain for the next five years irrespective of whatever irregularities that they do.”
Dr. Ndagi said government is not committed to higher education in Nigeria and that it is playing politics with it, noting that it keeps on opening new higher institutions even though they cannot properly fund the existing ones.
He said if you check the internet you can see some countries have higher quality education, while the Nigerian government is politicising it here.
“Is it opening universities in every state of the federation that matters or having a few and furnishing them with all the facilities that they require than having many without the structure and facilities to build quality education?,” he asked.
On sending Nigerian students to study their first degrees abroad, Ndagi also blamed government, saying, “It is government that is causing these problems. Some people are forced to do so. I don’t cherish sending children abroad for undergraduate study but for post graduate I can say I have seen some areas where you could say you don’t have people and manpower to man such courses at higher level but as far as I am concerned, there is no area you cannot mount a course for  undergraduate level.
“But even the realities of qualification on ground, some people are faulty; you have a situation where ASUU is on strike for six months, you don’t want to continue to keep your child at home while his mates are graduating from outside countries.
“The people are compelled to send their children abroad to study because there is no quality in our higher education; it is bedeviled with serious crisis. Go to many universities they have no laboratories and equipment, some have no enough classrooms and students stand for two hours to receive lectures. There has not been an enabling environment for students to learn at higher education in Nigeria.”
He also blamed politicians, noting that they do not want to sponsor education which is capital intensive because when you pump in money, it will take years before people will see the fruits, adding that they are more interested in building what people will see immediately.
“Any country that is playing with education is mortgaging the future of the citizens, especially the children and youth of that country,” he concluded.