by Godwin Akhimie.( Pt1) godwinakhimie@gmail.com
Education is a tool for achieving national development across the world. Education has received support from non government agencies, communities and government direct intervention in the area of grants and subventions.
The universities autonomy act No 1, 2007 was enacted by the National assembly and signed into law to insulate universities from bureaucracy of civil servants.
The act spelt out the autonomy and the management of federal universities in the areas of funding and appointment of principal officers of the universities.
Autonomy of the universities is independence of the universities as clearly stated by miscellaneous provisions act no 11 of 1993 and amended by the 2003 and 2007 acts respectively..
University autonomy is to allow the governing council of the universities freedom to discharge it's functions and exercise responsibilities for the sound management, growth and development of universities .The university autonomy is to allow universities operate without external influence. However, the government retains the powers in the dissolution of the governing council of the universities.
This is absurd as the autonomy itself has been rubbished by this singular caveat. The autonomy of universities should be total without any ambiguity
The university autonomy act stipulates that the government retains the ultimate power to dissolve the governing council of a university and sets up a visitation panel that can reinstate a vice chancellor that has been removed by the governing council of the university. This has led to disagreements and crisis in the universities overtime.
The crisis festers and disrupt the academic calendar of the universities. In most cases , the erring vice chancellor can enlist the services of the local branch of the academic staff Union of the universities to take side.
The university system has grown since Nigeria independence in 1960.it has grown both in the number of universities and students enrollment. Total students enrolled in the universities grew from 627,609 in 2002 to 1,711,000 in 2017. Statistics from the joint admission matriculation board ( JAMB) shows that students enrollment keep soaring while the available space for learning is shrinking. This has led to the establishment of private universities who charge exorbitant fees while giving admissions to students who can't meet the cut off marks set by the joint admission and matriculation board ( JAMB) and the public universities.
The inability of public universities to accommodate students seeking university education suggests that something is fundamentally wrong with our university system. Nigeria has 170 universities that are government and privately owned. ( 43 Federal universities, 48 state universities and 79 private universities) All these can only accommodate 2 million students. It simply means that much work has to be done to increase their capacity. This has created problem for university autonomy. Though, universities were established with autonomy but laws and acts given them autonomy has been reviewed by the various governments taking away their autonomy but the recent pronouncement made by the president granting them full autonomy needs to be backed by the act of parliament to set the record straight. The removal of the universities from the IPPIS payment platform by the current administration is part of granting full autonomy to the universities as they can pay lecturers and other staff directly from their accounts rather than get their salaries and allowances from the ministry of finance through the IPPIS platform that has caused shortfall in their salaries and reduced their morale.
The concept of university autonomy is very important in the management of universities around the world.
The University autonomy act is silent on the issue of the internally generated revenue of the universities. It simple means that the universities can generate revenue through unorthodox means and disburse the funds to where it is needed.
Overtime, due to shortfall in allocations to universities by the states and federal governments, the universities have device means of generating revenue to meet up with increasing expenditures . They are now owning bakeries, sachet and bottle water factories, campus shuttles and others.
This is alike to autonomy and will strengthen the universities to be independent from the bureaucracy of civil servants and financial allocation from the government.
The university is not a revenue generating agency of governments and as such the plan by the ministry of education to deduct 40% from their IGR recently and stopped by the President was timely. The financial allocation to universities has shrank in the last 10 years owing to fiscal challenges of the federal government.
The universities should not be reduced to glorified secondary schools because of inadequate funding as it will tell on the quality of graduates being churned out by the universities and this is Will be an albatross to nation building and development.
The composition of the governing council of the universities should be reviewed and the act amended. There should not be external membership of council that was increased from four to nine members. Under the section 2 of the principal act no 11 of 1993 before it was amended by act no 25 of 1996 to increase the membership of the council, the governing council of a federal universities consists of
*The Pro chancellor
*The vice chancellor
*The deputy vice chancellor
*One representative from the ministry of education.
* Four persons representing various interest groups
* Four persons appointed by the Senate of the university and others.
University autonomy is granting freedom to each university to conduct it's affairs according to it's peculiarity without interference from outside bodies, persons or government that chooses to support it. In recent years, university autonomy has been eroded. The university Senate has been severely eroded as a result. The academic staff Union of universities ( ASUU) has been pushing for university autonomy, claiming that Nigeria universities needs to control their internal mechanism and strengthen their internal management devoid of the control of the national university commission ( NUC). The appointment of the vice chancellors and other principal officers of the university should be done internally and not by the National university commission.
ASUU posited that the only way Nigeria universities can compete in the growing global community is to provide high quality education for its citizens and develop their country
Countries like Japan with high wealth has no mineral resources but has grown because of it's attention and spending on education most especially technical education
One method to encourage top level education is to implement fully, university autonomy. Reforms in the university autonomy will raise standard of education, sanity, and quality assurance system. The restoration of universities autonomy will promote Nigeria's growth and development and create a conducive atmosphere for university internal administration and management. University autonomy will allow for flexibility in response system in research that will contribute to national innovation and technology that will take Nigeria to greater height.
The long years of the eroded university autonomy has taking a toll on public universities. The infraction of laws governing public universities has been bastardised by politics and politicians. The problem bedeviling public universities is caused by the non full implementation of university autonomy. The bureaucracy used in the establishment of public universities has caused so much infrastructure decay, neglect, poor human resources, poor funding and direct interference into it's day to day activities by government agencies. Poor funding has been blamed for falling standard of education and human resources in the universities . As a result, it is quite difficult for universities to retain their talents who are leaving the country for greener pasture abroad.
Poor renumeration has robbed the universities of the retention of first class graduates who reject offers of employment by the universities.
The universities autonomy issues has been on after the colonial era but became worse from 1978 till date.
In the 60's , universities in Nigeria enjoyed proper funding as they were ranked amongst the best in the world and top five in Africa.
The universities had foreign students and lecturers and were fed and had good and competitive renumeration.
The standard of education in the universities started to fall in the late 70's, even as feeding fees was increased from #1.50 to #2 in 1978 which led to protest across Nigeria universities with the slogan of "Alli must go"
You can't grant universities autonomy without scrapping the regulatory bodies like the National university commission( NUC) and the Joint admission and matriculation board( JAMB)'
The NUC regulates the activities of the universities and unwarranted bureaucracy is embedded in their activities which slows down decision taking by the universities. The universities don't need JAMB to.conduct entry examination for students seeking admission in the universities because it has.caused exam malpractices and desperation on the part of students and parents who part with humongous money to pass the examination and when admitted will perform poorly.
The universities should be allowed to.conduct internal examination for admission seeking students and set criteria for admission of students.
University environment touted as ivory tower should not only connotes it by name but should be seen as one. University of Pretoria in south Africa and the university of Ghana enjoys somewhat autonomy and they are ranked above universities in Nigeria
in the latest ranking of best universities in Africa. Only few universities in Nigeria are among the best ten and it included two privately owned universities.
Privately owned universities are doing well because they are autonomous and not under government controlled.
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