By Lawal A. Dogara, Kaduna
The Vice Councillor of Ahmadu Bello University, Professor Ibrahim Garba has explained the reason why Nigerian Universities are not ranked among the best in the world, despite the several establishment of several universities across the country.
“The way we are going, Nigerian universities cannot be ranked among the best universities in the world , because you cannot remove the universities from the from the mess that surround the nation, universities are part of it.
” If not for the grace of God and resilience, universities of Nigeria would have been gone,”he said.
Speaking in Kaduna , he blamed under performance of Nigerian universities and their inability to compete with their contemporaries across the world on government’s poor educational policies and improper funding educational sector the country.
While comparing the level of government’s investment on education to the achievable standard of education in the country, the Vice Chancellor lamented that the ratio of students to lecturers is beyond what Nigerian universities can handle.
According to him, “by design a lecturer is supposed to teach 50 students for quality, and now you give such lecturer 3 to 4 hundred students, without increasing his remuneration , welfare or nothing. Not even the teaching support was increased. So naturally , the lecturer will work at the best of his own ability ,but certainly you cannot get the same quality products like someone who teaches 50 students.
“And worst of all the government continue to open more universities , more universities are opened in the country while you have not funded the ones already established , and you are opening new ones. When ABU is having challenge of man power, how do you think other universities are to cope in producing qualified graduates,” he asked?
“The government most be bold to either fund the universities or to ask the students to pay. If you don’t do this, there will be no improvement on education,” he opined.
“When an undergraduate is paying N20 thousand as charges for the whole year, and government says it has subsidised their fees, but whereas the reverse is the case, and the students want to get a degree that is equivalent to that of Oxford degree, is this realistic,” Professor Garba asked?
