Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik, Phd
They say Africans are lazy to read. Please don’t be lazy. Try to read and comprehend before you make any comment.
Let me introduce myself again. My name is
Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik, you can google that. I am of the opinion that we have the potential to change our narrative in Nigeria. It is not rocket science or quantum mechanics. All we need is just a little patriotism and the readiness to take certain decisions and do certain things differently.
To grow, you must learn from a person(s) that is/are better than you and plan on how to implement what you have learned from them. That is the rule of life. Several countries have sent their citizens for training to other countries to learn how they do things and bring the experience for the development of their country. On their return, the country gets value for the money spent on them. The stories are there, especially around Asia.
You can hardly find a country that funds its scholars for training and doesn’t care if they return or provisions are made for the utilization of the acquired knowledge except for Nigeria. We met some Chinese during our postgraduate training abroad. None of them that was on Chinese scholarship stayed back. They left back to their country as soon as they are done. Same as Malaysians.
But a very good friend and a
PTDF scholar at both MSc and PhD and currently a Postdoctoral fellow in Norway have this to say: “Nigerian government should not stop the funding of overseas scholarships because the foreign-trained Nigerians are adding value to the national development even if they remain in the diaspora. They send billions of dollars in remittances back home”. That is the view of a Nigerian scholar in the diaspora.
The question then is: as a developing country, why are we training these scholars? To come back to use their knowledge to help develop the country or to remain in diaspora and remit dollars to the country to train and support their siblings at home? This is a very important question that we need to answer to evaluate the future Nigeria we want to create for the next generation.
A developing country doesn’t just wake up overnight to become developed. They set a path towards development. The education system, especially their universities that develop skilled workforces usually plays a great role in their development. When Malaysia started its revolution, education was one sector they refused to play games with. Not long ago, they had a 10-year plan with clearly set objectives for PhD training. They focused on the aim and objectives with periodic evaluation of the progress made.
The aim was achieved within a set time and Malaysian universities are now training PhDs, especially for Nigeria, and their universities now generate forex for the country. International students were reported to contribute an average of RM7.2bn (£1.4bn) to Malaysia per year via tuition fees and other living expenses. The expectation in 2020 was to hit a target of 200,000 international students in Malaysia to generate RM15.6 billion before the
COVID-19 disruptions. So, where is our set path to progress? Continued funding of PhDs without any plan?
PTDF overseas scholarship scheme is about 20 years old.
TETFUND scholarship scheme for academic staff is about 10 years old, and the two scholarship schemes alone have produced several Masters and PhDs degree holders over the last 20 years. A lot of them are back in our universities. No form of appraisal to evaluate how far we have gone with the schemes and the next step, but some colleagues who happened to be beneficiaries of one of these scholarship schemes said the overseas training should go on and that it is premature to stop it, and that after all those that refused to return are remitting dollars to the country to support their family in Nigeria.
We are trained as researchers and critical thinkers supposedly for the country. We are supposed to help the country think else why will they spend such an amount of public funds on us. To know the level of the prematurity of the schemes, we need to know how far we have come, where we are now, and where we want to be.
So, first, why is the country training PhDs? Where is the database of the trained scholars from these schemes? How many have the country trained? What are their areas of specialization? How many have returned? Are these scholars well-utilized or underutilized? What are the challenges responsible for the underutilization? How have we tried to address these challenges to ensure their effective utilization? What are the professional gaps? What are the critical areas we need to train more manpower?
You can’t convince me that we should keep training more if there is no evaluation process over the last 20 years to answer these questions. Meanwhile, what is your definition of prematurity? Scholars have been trained and some have returned and they have no basic facilities to train others and you insist we should keep sending people for training?
You blame ASUU for everything and insist that tuition should be introduced in our public universities because you think government cannot fund university education and again you feel the same government should still be funding overseas scholarships even if the people won’t return. Isn’t that a double standard? What exactly is your idea of a progressive Nigeria?
At the moment, we have several well-trained PhDs in our universities. If you want to see homegrown solutions to our problems, the fund for overseas scholarship should for example be divided into 3 parts. Two parts should be used to award the same scholarship to Nigerians in Nigerian universities and clearly define thematic area of national interest, while the remaining one part is used for overseas scholarships in areas we are lacking.
Do you seriously believe that we can’t train quality PhD in Nigeria? Pan African University’s Life and Earth Sciences (including Health and Agriculture) (PAULESI) is located within the University of Ibadan. They are producing funded international PG degrees. Their students are from across African countries. Some of the lecturers are from Nigerian public universities.
We have the African University of Science and Technology, Abuja. They are producing funded international PhDs. A number of their lecturers are from Nigerian public universities while some others obtained their first degree from Nigerian universities.
We have the African Centre of Excellence For Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology (ACENTDFB) in Ahmadu Bello University, a World Bank project. They are producing funded international PhDs. The students are from different African countries. A number of their lecturers are ABU lecturers.
While some of these centres located within the public universities are well funded and doing great, the research activities at the departments of these universities are not funded but by the students. We spend billions to train scholars that return and have no tools to work with and we are training more to come and join. Why not empower the returned trained scholars to train others?
In my opinion, we seriously need to consider the diversion of a large chunk of the overseas scholarship funds to the national scholarship funds for the already trained TETFund and other scholars to train others while overseas scholarship is focused on training PhDs on the identified areas that we have limited expertise in. We need to be specific.
We surely have an attitudinal problem in our universities and some of us have problems with financial discipline. But with proper monitoring and evaluation processes put in place, we can deal with that for effective utilization of such funds.
If we really want Nigeria to progress, we have to take some drastic measures to make our system prosper, irrespective of how it affects personal interests. People, most likely their patriots, make those countries so beautiful that we want to go there for PhDs and remain. We can also make our country that great. All it need is just a little effort from each and every one of us. And please, don’t just be an armchair critic from your homes or abroad, come and join us and let’s put hands together to mould the Nigeria of our dream. We can do it!
