The tertiary education system in Nigeria is riddled with so tremendous problems, starting from under-funding, to strikes, infrastructural decay, and corruption for which Nigeria is king from a general global perception. All these problems cumulate in the alarming fall in generally accepted international standards. Everyone is worried especially as the world community is now very skeptical about the standard of knowledge and degrees emanating from our educational system. And this has been compounded by incessant strikes and insincerity on the part of the nation’s leadership. Whereas the United Nations recommend that 26% of national budgets be allocated to education, Nigeria has hardly ever funded the education Ministry by even 10% of her annual budgets.
However, my contention in this paper is that the fall in the standard of tertiary education does not start from the tertiary level itself; it starts from the primary and secondary school levels. No solid teaching or learning ever takes place in our public primary and secondary schools any more. Many teachers go to school once or twice a week in most of them and are not well motivated to teach correctly. No child ever fails a class any more. Whether you pass or fail, you move to the next level, unlike in the past when pupils were made to continue repeating their levels until they were found worthy to move on to the next. Again, there is also this fact that after the secondary school certificate examination in Nigeria, the next idea that comes to the mind of every child is the JAMB. For every parent and child, it appears so automatic, no other option; whereas in many other countries not every child who leaves the secondary school applies to go to the university.
The questions we should ask ourselves are: who are the eventual candidates for our universities? How do they gain admission? With what knowledge and certificates do they gain admission and are they qualified at entry? Are they not products of our secondary schools where no effective teaching takes place and which are poorly managed? We should stop blaming the fall in standards on the university alone. The fall in standard already started in the primary/secondary school.
In well organized systems, the counseling process is so effective that the pupil is long made to know his actual vocation before the end of his final year at school. It is not everyone that has the calling for university education. Our 6-3-3-4 system of education adopted in the 1980s is simply cosmetic and our Guidance Counselors are lacking in their roles in this direction. It is under these conditions that a candidate enters the Nigerian University and the golden rule of garbage in garbage out automatically applies. It would be foolhardy to expect miracles. What would one expect from a weak base in any enterprise, as opposed to a solid base which ensures a sound academic pursuit?
Tertiary institutions grow at a more astronomical rate in Nigeria than in any other country in the world, but I want to limit my discourse to the university system. In the past one decade, the number of universities in Nigeria has doubled from some sixty universities to well over 120. The only rational behind these increases is mere political considerations of quota and not necessarily of real contextual situations. No cognizance is taken of whether there is qualified manpower to pilot the affairs of those institutions. That is not important for as long as a “son of the soil” will be the Vice-chancellor and education brought home to the State with every Tom, Dick and Harry given admission on Local Government quota basis, as if one from State A cannot study in other states B, M, X, Z, Y as the case may be. It has reached the extent whereby teachers are all sourced from within the State. It is no longer question of University but now of Stateversity. No more cross-ventilation of ideas but that of recycling prevailing knowledge within a locality. This reminds me of the pressure mounted on Imo State citizens to go home by a sister state when a university was founded at Owerri for Imo State.
In my last university overseas, expatriate staff was from 32 countries and foreign students from 112 countries totaling a population of 2914 students. It is not same as when the students of a university come from only one country and perhaps from the few local government areas that make up a particular state! There can hardly be any cross-fertilization of ideas.
I have also heard it argued in a Federal Government University that a particular student should go and look for admission in his catchment area, notwithstanding that his score would give him admission. Instead, candidates with as low as mark as 180/400 were admitted leaving the person with 280/400 not admitted just because he/she came from another state. For as long as merit is thrown to the winds in such exercises, we would only be chasing shadows in getting good candidates for the ivory tower. But we want our children admitted in Universities in South Africa, Britain, the USA where they are not citizens but refuse admission to fellow Nigerians for reasons of discrimination! If other countries of the world were to do that, people like us would not have studied overseas because we were non citizens. And experience has shown that you acquire more knowledge the more you interact with people of diverse cultures. Even this same discrimination is being applied as in the course of the just ended strike by ASUU where the Minister of education would be pleading the cause of only Federal Universities as if all the other universities should be allowed to produce any quality of graduates they like, no longer question of universal standards. For him, State or even private universities are not the concern of the federal government for which it superintends the education Ministry. Nonetheless, his portfolio is not the Minister of Federal Institutions but the Minister of Education for the entire nation!
Also, in Nigeria, having university education has become a status symbol and most parents do not have any qualms about buying their children’s admission into the university. The consequence is that the number of people who vie for university education is over bloated, far more than the facilities available would sustain. For some candidates, it has become a do or die affair as they have sat for this same examination for upwards of three to four times, after which they want to gain admission by all means (foul and crook). They now look for touts who readily accept bribes and perhaps eventually get them placed for courses they did not bargain for. They cannot eventually cope well and surely become “sorting experts”. And so “sorting” retains a status and kills the system.
The establishment of a university should be matched with real needs. When there is a Faculty of Medicine in Abia State, it becomes just unnecessary to have same faculty in the four sister states around it. A few specialized universities in particular zones could be established for serve the needs of the entire nation instead of the proliferation of non-viable institutions that cannot pass accreditation. Universities of Science and Technology ought not to be proliferated as just a few of them need to be established in the entire country. Thus, numerous students, no matter their places of origin would go there to acquire the best of knowledge aided by the best library books in those specialized areas. Concentration of technical manpower would better be guaranteed, instead of scattering these institutions in areas where adequate manpower can hardly be guaranteed. Standards fall because we continue founding institutions without any guarantee of any one of them being standard in content.
Also, the fact of founding universities as a means of job creation has lowered the quality of staff needs as many university teachers are not qualified to teach in the ivory tower since teaching in the university is not the same as teaching in the secondary school. One gets qualified for it by getting specialized in specific areas of research. In many countries of the world, the ability to be a university teacher is determined by rigorous interviews where many candidates are subjected to talk on their specific areas before a panel. It is not question of letters of introduction from a Senator, or the Minister or Commissioner meant to influence the recruitment. Whoever is best qualified, be he a foreigner or indigene is recruited to teach.
Miracles should not be expected from the university. The golden adage of “garbage in, garbage out” normally applies. No one should expect wonders from bad candidates pushed into the university system. One would say in conclusion that greater care and attention should be given to basic elementary school training as a panacea to good products being “garbaged “into the university system. I would even recommend that the high school system be re-established so that the High School certificate or the Advanced level GCE or equivalent certificates be made the pre-requisite for university admission as in many parts of the world. And we should pay greater attention to primary / secondary education levels to be able to produce good candidates for the university system because, unless we admit good university materials, we may not possibly produce good university graduates.
Okeke, is a professor of French & Applied Linguistics.
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