Abia state abandoned a tertiary institution when the teachers went on strike. That school – Abia State College of Education – has collapsed, and the teachers and students are gone, 100%. It is possible that our state and federal governments in Nigeria could begin abandoning schools in coming months – and some will struggle. Largely, state and federal governments will ask university vice chancellors to generate a big portion of their operating budgets. If that happens, the ceiling on school fees will begin to fade.
This is when agitation for autonomy will take shape. My alma mater, FUTO, did something last week – it began mass producing and shipping hand sanitizers to manage coronavirus. Certainly, making hand sanitizers by a federal technical university is not a big deal. What is big there is that the university has used that to support its host communities. It recently donated hand sanitizers to Imo state government, hospitals, etc, reducing the burden on the federal government. The government will need that type of experiment from our schools.
How can our schools create IPs to generate revenue? That conversation will become critical in coming months in Nigeria. FUTO’s transition from lab to market is the ultimate experiment. And I am sure Mr. President in Abuja would like to see more from our schools.
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If you study Nigeria critically, everything else is growing, except the sense and capacity to plan. It hasn’t grown an inch since independence, and therefore we keep putting up argument that was valid in the 60s and want same to be valid today. It is not short of insanity, but that’s how we have always run Nigeria.
What other use do our universities have, other than admitting students and graduating them, with some of the graduates not really different from when they got in, aside from adding couple of years to their age? And we keep doing the same thing for decades.
What’s Nigeria’s population in the 60s compared to now, and how many universities back then compared to now? If government back then had capacity to fund universities 100%, we don’t need an oracle to tell us that it’s unrealistic now. So, why do we keep believing that it’s possible to offer quality education without paying commensurate fee for it? The lame argument is: if you make it expensive, you exclude the poor, so what did we do? We made it cheap for everyone and killed quality. What a great choice!
Now that we don’t have money to fund anything again, it may be wise to allow universities to fend for themselves, that way, the professors can earn their wages.
this should not come as a surprise. industrial chemistry department in FUTO must show it self able to deliver – even in this pandemic