Before the Mega Varsities Authur; Professor. Tosanwumi Otokunefo (ALPHA EDUCATION FOUNDATION)
The endorsement of the recommendations of the Peter Obi led Technical committee on the Needs Assessment of Nigerian Universities (CNANU) by the National Economic Council (NEC) was the high point of the meeting on Thursday the 25th of April 2013. The technical committee had recommended that six federal universities, one in each geopolitical zone be upgraded to the status of mega institutions capable of absorbing between 150,000 and 200,000 students. Governor Obi said then that the upgrade of the designated universities would assist in clearing the backlog of students seeking admission into Nigerian universities. President Goodluck Jonathan had earlier expressed grave concern about the growing number of applicants estimated at about 1.5 million in the last three years, who are unable to secure a place in the Nigerian university system. This appears to be the single most important factor behind the far reaching decision to create six mega universities in the country. The question that must be satisfactorily answered before the rush to create these mega universities is, how many of the applicants are actually qualified for admission into Nigerian universities in the first place. In order to secure admission into the university, a candidate must pass three sets of examination of which the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) is the most fundamental. A prospective candidate must obtain five credits in the senior school certificate examination including English and mathematics in order to qualify for admission. Information from the Nigerian national office of the West African Examination Council indicated that only a fraction of the candidates, 649,156 out of the 1,672,224 that sat for the examination in 2012 secured the minimum requirements for admission, that is, excluding the requirements for appropriateness of subject combination for the desired course. On the long run, probably not more than 500,000 candidates may possess the SSCE requirements for admission into specific courses in the university system. If things are done properly without sentiments, only candidates who possess the minimum SSCE requirements should be permitted to sit for the unified tertiary matriculation examination. Currently, there appears to be an acute shortage of the political will to do the right thing. Secondly, the Nigerian university system is just one of the tertiary educational systems in the country, with the polytechnics and colleges of education constituting the others. The polytechnics and the colleges of education provide the middle level manpower
needs for the nations industries and may account for as much as 40 percent of the workers. These other tertiary institutions have been neglected and relegated to the background in the scheme of things in the nation’s developmental plans to the extent that in 2010, only 45,140 candidates indicated preference for the mono/polytechnics and colleges of education (MPCE) as against 1,330,531 for the universities. It must be emphasized that there are greater employment potentials for graduates of the MPCE institutions in the job market than for university graduates. The current dilemma of the Nigerian primary school system stems from the huge shortfall in the number of National Certificate of Education (NCE) holders who constitute the bulk of the teaching staff. In many states of the federation, secondary school certificate holders and secondary school dropouts are actively involved in teaching because of the paucity of qualified personnel. The same is true for many of our industries where polytechnic graduates are needed but are often not available. We must strengthen the mono/polytechnics and colleges of education in terms of investment and expansion of facilities to absorb more secondary school leavers, and produce the manpower we need. The existing universities are currently producing graduates who are considered unemployable and on the long run unemployed. These half-baked products are the raw materials for the gang of armed robbers and kidnappers that are currently terrorizing the nation. The needs assessment report on the state of the Nigerian university system and the current ASUU demand for substantial increase in funding has only highlighted the degree of decay in the system. With the current state of affairs in the university education system, the most logical thing to do is to provide fund for essential infrastructure, equipment and to train the requisite manpower in order to improve on the quality of her products. This cannot happen overnight. Furthermore, it will be imperative to improve on the quality of graduates of our secondary schools through improvement in the quality of teachers and reduction in the level of examination malpractice which has become a great hindrance to learning. This will greatly improve on the feedstock for the Nigerian university industry and hence the quality of her products. If Nigeria should succeed in ten years to upgrade the nation’s universities to international standards, it would be a feat unparalleled in the history of the African continent. But a rush to create mega institutions from the current apologies we call universities will only aggravate the crisis the Nigerian universities are currently experiencing.