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Underfunding : Nigerian Academics Worst Paid In Africa

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Nasar Mansur

 

 

 

By Dr. Nasar Mansir

 

Nigerians are generally bold and confident wherever you found them in the world. They are hardworking, intelligent, and socially adept. Recently I read that Nigerians living in the United States of America are the most educated immigrant superseding even the host’s citizens based on the percentage of the population having a college degree.

 

This is the same story across the globe from Europe to North America, Asia to  Australia; Nigerians have demonstrated excellence in many fields ranging from academics to other professional skills.

 

Despite the extraordinary performance displayed by Nigerians in various fields, the country still spends a huge sum of money on postgraduate training of it is academic staff abroad, something avoidable.

 

According to Statistica, Nigeria has a population of about 206 million people, which placed it as the most populated country in Africa and the 7th most populated in the world.

 

Besides, the country was blessed with huge natural and human resources that can comfortably take the country out of its present condition of poverty, insecurity, and ignorance.

 

A lot of people attributed the current bad situation to poor leadership, corruption, and greediness among the majority of Nigerians. Some people may argue that the main problem is from the leaders alone, who were given the capacity to steer the affairs of the country to the promised land.

IPPIS: AGF’s Office Is perpetrating Fraud-ASUU

But for me, the problem is from the majority of the population, where all the leaders are selected to lead the entire population for a specific period of time. These people represent the fair sampling of our behaviors.

 

The attitudes of our leaders portray the replica of the entire population’s attitudes, hence a rigorous attitudinal change is necessary for us to develop as a country.

 

Let me not digress much from the main topic, I mean the poor situation and underfunding of our educational system, which has been grounding slowly day by day.

 

Education remains the only sector where poor people can still directly benefit from the government in Nigeria.  Education is virtually free up to the University level to date.

 

 

However, the system is deteriorating slowly from primary & secondary education and now approaching the tertiary institutions. It is unfortunate that the government that was singlehandedly elected by the masses with the hope of rekindling their wellbeing in the areas of education, security, and jobs for the teeming youth is losing it is the main focus for all the three aforementioned problems.

 

To say that no country would develop to a high status without better education for its citizens is an understatement. Nigeria is currently undertaking a perilous journey by abandoning its educational system in an awful state and focusing more on the welfare of the politicians that are far less than 0.1% of the country’s population.

 

 

No country would take this dangerous road and end up in the promised land. The education budget in Nigeria is pathetically low (about 6%) and therefore among the lowest anywhere in the world.

 

 

This behavior is common among the African countries, hence tagged as third world countries, a phrase synonymous with ignorance, underdevelopment, and diseases.

 

 

According to the United Nations, for a country to have a good education, 26% of the budget must be allocated to education. The 2021 budget was recently presented to the national assembly for their perusal and approval as enshrined by the country’s constitution.

 

 

However, the budget allocation for the country’s educational sector was meager N 671.07 billion (1.49 billion dollars at N450 to dollar rate) for 206 million people. This is very small when compared to the education budget of some countries that have a much lower population and fewer resources compared to Nigeria.

 

Underfunding of the education sector, particularly universities, could lead to the unnecessary prolonging of calendar due to incessant strike, producing half-baked graduates in all areas including medicine, which makes it difficult to address the upcoming challenges in their field.

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Poor graduates would find it difficult to compete in other spheres around the world. Additionally, the brain drained of our experts from various fields is one of the major problems facing our educational system.

 

 

Academic staff union of universities (ASUU) has been on strike for seven consecutive months from March 2020 to date. ASUU is on strike because the government has failed to fulfill the agreements signed with the union since 2009.

 

The main issues are the revitalization funds totaling to about 1.1 trillion Naira for all the 77 Nigerian universities and the state universities, renegotiation (Salary and other allowances upgrade), and the university autonomy (allowing universities to hire staff and manage their finances).

 

ASUU has been relentlessly fighting for the cause of a better tertiary education system in Nigeria from the 1980s to date, which has yielded many positive changes that can be seen all over the Nigerian tertiary institution campuses.

 

However, despite the achievements recorded by ASUU over this period, tertiary education in Nigeria is far from perfection when compared to other developing countries across the globe.

 

Underfunding of education, that leads to the continuous deterioration of our tertiary institutions, particularly universities, and the welfare of its staff is alarming. The current struggle of ASUU to convince the federal government to solve the lingering problems affecting the system that would ensure the continued existence of public universities is now considered as the mother of all struggles.

 

 

The government is doing everything possible to see that the university education system is no longer public but private. This claim is unanimously supported by the forceful introduction of integrated personal payroll information system (IPPIS) to the university system and student bank loan suggested by some Nigerian capitalists.

 

 

This system is foreign, which is made to impose on developing countries, thereby destroying their educational system that may lead to the subsequent introduction of tuition fees to the masses. It is common knowledge that Nigerian academics are the worst paid in Africa, talk less of advanced countries in Europe and North America.

 

 

The Nigerian government needs to brace up and allocate a better budget to the education sector, at least 26% as recommended by the United Nation. Our university infrastructures and remuneration of staff should be upgraded to at least the African average. The laboratories, workshops, and libraries in our tertiary institutions are archaic, lacking basic modern facilities for learning and research.

 

Some countries such as Malaysia that are presumed to have started developing together with Nigeria, have made huge investments in education and today they are having the best universities in their region and attracted international students from more than 25 countries around the world. Malaysia is a country of about 32.7 million people as of July 2020 according to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, just less than one-sixth of Nigeria’s population.

 

 

The Malaysian government presented its 2021 budget yesterday and to my greatest surprise, the education sector was allocated the largest budget among all the sectors/ministries in the country.

 

 

Education Department was allocated the sum of 64.1 billion Ringgits (15.4 billion USD, 7.051 trillion Naira). The budget is so impressive by any standard considering the country’s economy, population, and resources.

 

 

The commitment of the Malaysian government toward proper funding of its educational sector, elevate the country’s tertiary education to be among the best in the world. University of Malaya (UM) is ranked no 59 in the world by QS ranking in terms of teaching and research superseding many Universities in the UK, USA, France, and Canada.

 

 

The first four universities in the country are ranked 59, 132, 141, 142, and 187 positions in the QS world ranking for UM, UPM, UKM, USM, and UTM, respectively. As I was told by one retired professor in Malaysia, some of these universities were hiring visiting professors from Nigeria, notably ABU Zaria, University of Ibadan, and the University of Nigeria Nsuka in the 1970s.

 

Proper funding to Nigerian Universities will not make the country bankrupt but rather bringing prosperity, sustainability, and more wealth to the country through winning some global research grants, attracting more international students and scholars from Africa and other countries around the world.

 

 

There is no doubt, Nigerian scholars are equal to this task once the proper funding and better remuneration are provided to the system and the staff. Nigerian government could improve its economy through education in the same way countries like Malaysia, India, and Egypt have done.

 

 

Nigerian Universities are ranked very low in global Universities ranking not because of unqualified professors but because of underfunding, which denied the Nigerian academics enabling environment and modern scientific facilities to teach up to date knowledge and undertake authentic research that could be accepted and published in high ranking journals.

 

With proper funding and other stakeholder’s commitment towards tertiary education, Nigerian Universities will roar again

 

Dr. Nasar Mansir

Wrote from University Putra Malaysia

43300 UPM Serdang, Selangor

News

Muslim-Muslim Ticket: idea fixation pathetic, religion be excluded in politics and governance, says El-Rufai

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The Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, has described the possibility that the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, would run a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the 2023 presidential election as mere speculation.

Making a remark on Channels TV’s political show, Politics Today, he said, Nigerians’ obsession with religion – when it comes to voting – rather than competence is sad. “This fixation of Nigerians on religion instead of competence, capacity, and capability is quite sad and pathetic.”

El-Rufai said that anyone asking him questions about the controversial Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket is asking the wrong person, because, in the 2019 general election he settled for a qualified Muslim woman as a running mate and won the election in Kaduna State.

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He said, “I don’t look at people from Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian angle. Most of my closest friends are Christians. It was Pastor Tunde Bakare, a Pentecostal pastor, that took me to the CPC, not President Buhari. I’m very close to Bakare. I’m very close to many Christians. I don’t think the business of governance has anything to do with religion. I think we should look for the best person for the job. A person that will get the job done and let him do that.”

He advised Nigerian journalists to keep religion out of politics and government. He said, “I don’t think we should be looking at religion. We want to develop this country. When I get into a plane, I don’t ask about the religion of the pilot. When I go to the hospital, I don’t ask for the doctor’s religion of the doctor, I just want to get well. I just want to get to my destination when in an aircraft.

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Nigerian Universities, the interference of Professional bodies, and the time bomb

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Having worked with multidisciplinary teams during my PhD at the Department of Engineering of the University of Leicester and postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Electric Power Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), I decided to experiment the acceptability of a multidisciplinary team in Engineering departments in Nigerian universities in 21st century on my return in 2015. Then, I was already due to be a Senior Lecturer in ABU since 2014. So I sent my CV and an application letter for the position of Associate Professor to the VC through the Head of Electrical Engineering Department of one of our public universities in November 2015. And I received the following not very surprising reply.
“Having perused your application documents, I found them interesting and relevant to the need of the department. However, I cannot pass your application for further processing because of the post applied for. For your information, the Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nig. (COREN) has fixed the bar of an Engineering lecturer who is not registered with COREN at Lecturer I regardless of the number of his/her publications.”
The question that came to my mind was that is the regulation of engineering lecturers in universities part of the mandates of COREN? I read the reply again and he was very emphatic on my PhD and postdoctoral research experience and the relevance to his department. I was made to understand that the University has no academic staff in the area of high voltage engineering, but for them to utilize my experience in high voltage engineering, if I was actually ready to move there, I have to accept to be demoted for 4 years because COREN said so. And I can’t grow no matter my research output till I am registered with COREN. Amazing offer! It will take a complete idiot to accept such an offer. That is the reality of the compartmentalization of our university system and the destruction of the Nigerian university system and the structure by supposed professionals.
This was completely different from my experience in my two universities in Europe. Prof. Len Dissado had a first degree in chemistry and a PhD in chemistry but was a Professor of Engineering at Leicester because his research area was in Dielectrics, a topic very relevant to High Voltage Engineering. He was retained as Emeritus when I left in 2012. Dr. Steve S. Dodd had his first degree in Physics and PhD in Physics but was employed as a Senior Lecturer in Engineering (High Voltage Engineering group) because his research area was in Electrical insulation materials. He retired as a Reader in High Voltage Engineering. The HoD of the Electric Power Engineering as at the time I left the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2015 had a PhD in Physics and was a Professor of Electric Power Engineering. Universities in the rest of the world are closing gaps, while we are widening the gap. Since I could not close the gap, so we decided to have a High Voltage Laboratory in the Physics department.
In universities, we are academics and research workers. Irrespective of the field, we are employed to teach and do research. The yardstick for evaluating your performance is research output. Engineering graduates in academia are not left out. They are not employed as Engineers. Universities have their Engineers to do the engineering work. As an academic, you can be COREN registered to enable you to practice outside the university but not for the classroom and research labs in the university. I once asked a colleague some years back if as a university worker, he is an Engineer for real or a teacher and he was silent. I asked about the value of COREN registration in his teaching of Engineering courses, research output, and student project supervision and he could not give me a straight answer.
I still find it weird that COREN, a body regulating practicing engineers on the field is now setting standards for promotion in the Engineering departments of Nigerian universities. They will soon be telling Nigerian universities what to teach and what not to teach. The other councils of professionals will soon follow to set what they perceived as standards for the respective faculties or departments.
The interference of the Councils of professionals in the affairs of Nigerian universities has grown beyond setting promotion guidelines. They are now deciding the establishment of faculties and the duplication of academic departments. It does not matter the burden of running such faculties and departments on the universities. I am still wondering how they are able to twist the hands of NUC and the universities’ Senate and Governing Council to achieve all that. Not long ago, the Faculty of medicine in Nigerian public universities were converted to Colleges of Medical Sciences with 4 faculties and several departments, thanks to the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria.
What baffled me was the fact that the Department of Biochemistry, for example, that has taught medical students the biochemistry they know since the inception of the study of medicine in Nigerian universities is suddenly no more qualified to teach medical students because the Lecturers do not have a degree in medicine. Very amazing! We now have duplicated Biochemistry departments across Nigerian universities that they called “Medical Biochemistry” in the college of medicine. The “medical biochemistry” will possibly be taught by the Medical Doctors based on what they learned from the Biochemists in life science while in medical school. Could this be a case of trading quality for ego?
We also, for example, have a medical microbiology department in the college of medicine, a microbiology
department in the faculty of life science, and a vet microbiology department in the faculty of Veterinary medicine.
The microbiologists will be able to explain to us the difference between the different versions of the microbiology.
I was in Norway in 2014 when the Norwegian couple at NTNU shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine with a Professor at the University College London (UCL). I tried to check the structure of these 2 universities. The faculty of medicine at NTNU has no biochemistry department. The Department of Biotechnology and Food Sciences, a replica of the Biochemistry department, is in the faculty of natural science and they provide service to the faculty of Medicine as we had before the coming of the colleges of medicine in Nigerian universities.
How the increased number of departments helping to improve the quality of our academic output is what I can’t figure out. Rather than the duplication of service departments that will only increase the number of academic departments and won’t really add much value to the system but increased running cost, we should have created a college of life sciences and pulled the relevant faculties and departments into it.
Individualistic research is going extinct and most of the novelties of the 21st century are from interdisciplinary researches. One of the winners of the 2014 Nobel prize in medicine John O’Keefe is a neuroscientist in the Faculty of life sciences at the UCL with his degrees in Psychology. But the others, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser are both neuroscientists from the Faculty of Medicine at NTNU and received their first degree from the Department of Psychology and PhD in neurophysiology at the Faculty of Medicine in Oslo.
There is nothing more fascinating than the fusing of different ideas together to produce a unique product. That is the exploration in the 21st century. The world has left us behind in individualistic ideology and moved into multidisciplinary academics. If we must make progress in our universities, we must break our erected artificial barriers that are keeping us apart. The academics in physical sciences and engineering must come together with possibly a research centre that is into cutting-edge research that will involve research groups from all the relevant departments. Same way to bring life science and medical complex together.
I have seen graduates of mathematics that became Professors of Econometrics in Economics departments in universities in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. I have seen a graduate of Chemistry that became a Professor of Engineering in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. I have seen a graduate of Physics that became a Professor of Electric Power Engineering in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. In Nigeria, I have seen Engr (Prof) XXX boldly written on our doors in the department but not in the universities in Europe. Are we having an identity crisis?
Professional bodies that are supposed to focus on the regulation of Professionals in the field should focus on their mandate and not be given free hands to change University policies as it pleases them. If we don’t end their interference, just like the medical council, COREN could wake up one day to tell our universities that there is a need for colleges of Engineering with departments of mathematics and physics to service the college because those in Mathematics and Physics departments are not qualified to teach engineering students because they don’t have engineering degrees. Vet council, Pharmaceuticals council, builders council, architects council, Quantity surveyors council, etc, may follow. So, how are we going to handle that?
Let’s stick to the founding principles of the university. Universities have world standards. We can stick to our British standard or borrow a leaf from the world’s top universities to improve our system, instead of allowing professional bodies to manipulate us and create barriers within the university system that will further slow down the progress we are to make.
Our universities are not in it’s best form and we have to do what we have to do to improve them. We should be more preoccupied with that. We should be discussing how to reposition Nigerian universities to be able to stand up to our various challenges and not duplicate departments without facilities because some Councils of professionals said so.
Finally, to my colleagues in Electric power engineering or high voltage engineering in Nigerian universities, you are welcome to experience our High Voltage Materials Laboratory in the Department of Physics, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. We have a 400 kV DC generator and 100 kV AC source with a partial discharge measurement system to serve you. Join us to learn the physics of electric power equipment. We do not have barriers!

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Galadima Knocks Nigeria Sports Handlers Over Laziness in Talent Development,

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By Abdulgafar Oladimeji.

Former chairman, Nigeria Football Association , NFA Ibrahim Galadima(MFR) has faulted the administration, promotion and development of sports in Nigeria, noting that  the continuous  degenerating  global  status of Nigeria on the  sporting  arena could be attributed to laziness.

The outspoken sports administrator   stated that the absence of  clear  cut policies  on how  sports should be driven in Nigeria  constitutes parts of the factors that  has enrolled Nigeria on the path of total  failure.

Galadima in his remarks  on ( Thursday)at a one day workshop organized by Sports Writers Association of Nigeria, SWAN  Kano state chapter held at the conference hall of the Kano state Sports Commission with the theme “Early Warnings and Security Vigilance At Sports Events, he said “we re yet to clearly structure and drive the message clearly to say whether we   are in sports for business or  for leisure purposes.”

“our sports is going through difficult times, certainly, the Kenyans have  a clear concentration, they  have  shown clearly where they belong by dominating marathon races, recently they came to Kaduna and stamped their dominance.

“The abundant talent in Nigeria remained untapped, no age group graduation, even if you are in Chad, you are considered as a foreign based athlete, we are now so lazy in identifying talents.” Galadima lamented.

He alleged that lack of trust and confidence has  sent sponsors out of the industry, adding that potential brand sponsors are shying away from injecting their monies into  the industry for the fear of unaccountability.

 

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