Poor funding bane behind Nigerian varsities business enterprises - VC

Contrary to the general view that education should be free, the incumbent vice-chancellor of Modibbo Adama University of Technology (MAUTECH), Adamawa state, Professor Mohammed Kyari has blown bags of dust into the eyes of the education system in the country, saying almost universities in the country have become business-oriented due to the poor funding and management factor

Madibo stated this while answering questions from the journalists on problems impending the university education system in Nigeria.

Answering question on  how the universities in the country have been able to be creative in order to maintain quality close to the global standard, the VC remarked: "How creative can they be and what else can they do? Nigerian universities literally have become business outlets.

"Universities are selling table water, running bakeries and commercial bus services or guest house services. This is no way to run a university. It can never fund universities. The bottom line is that as long as universities are not sufficiently funded to do basic teaching and research, they cannot function.

"Creativity will be constrained because you cannot be creative when you don’t have the resources. Sometimes we switch off electricity because we can’t pay for electricity. There would be public electricity supply, but we’ll have to switch off simply because we cannot afford the cost.

"We require about N20m per month to maintain the university on public power supply. But, whatever government gives may be sufficient for only three months of the year, not for 12 months. So you have to be creative. But creativity is in how to run the university within limited resources.

Kyari also talked about the funding of the university education in Nigeria. He said: "Funding is key to any organisation, not only to education. But the federal government’s policy is that there should be no tuition fees in the public universities and we abide by it. But then, if you say there’s no tuition fees, who is going to pay the cost?

"The cost will have to be borne by the government. So there is a gap between not paying fees, which is the policy and the inability of government to fund universities to the optimum. That’s the bottom line.

"It is either parents or the students will have to pay or government will have to pay up so that you get the quality education you require. If that does not happen then you cannot get the optimum. But somehow we are surviving under very difficult circumstances.

"But, remember that government is paying 100 per cent of our personnel costs, which is huge. For this university, it is above N3bn per annum. So by the time government pays N3bn on personnel alone, then there isn’t much left for the purpose of teaching and research, as well as for buying equipment and reagents in the laboratories.

"So government will have to come up with a form of a sustainable way of having to fund the university system."

Meanwhile. MAUTECH re-wrote history by appointing Hajiya Halima Mohammed as its first female registrar, breaking a long existing jinx in the male dominated system.

Sa’ad Aliyu, the acting information officer of the university, in a statement once sent out, announced this development in the state's capital, Yola, on Wednesday, September 5.

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