A few hours ago, I’d suggested merging some federal universities in Nigeria to reduce administrative cost on the construct that Nigeria does not have the financial capacity to inject more funds beyond what it currently offers. In my thesis, the Big Merge is a way out unless we want to ask students to pay. Unfortunately, I still vote for education subsidy as that is the only thing the poor citizens get from the nation. If you remove subsidies, economic mobility will dry up as not many families can afford to send their kids to universities.
So if the public schools cannot increase tuition, what can we do? Follow the University of California system as I have noted. I visited Rwanda from Carnegie Mellon University. I met the minister of education. Rwanda was setting up University of Rwanda (UR) which was a university after the country merged about seven universities/institutes including the National University of Rwanda. Prof Ogwu was the rector of Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST); I met Prof Ogwu when he was a professor in University of Paisley (Scotland); Ifeoma, my wife, studied in his school. Today, another Nigerian Prof Egiebor is the vice chancellor of UR; he was in my master’s degree committee at Tuskegee University. Most of the players around this are Nigerians!
Where am I going? Rwanda has tapped some Nigerians to fix its educational system. Yes, the strategic execution has many Nigerian elements. And the results are amazing even at the pre-university level. In Rwanda today, many private schools are struggling as parents pull their kids out of expensive private primary and secondary schools since the public ones are just as good. If that is the case, why waste money?
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ASUU and the Nigerian government know what to do. But they are playing games. We can increase enrollment by 20% while cutting administrative costs by close to 37%. Of course, how do you expect professors to go LEAN when the national assembly/presidency remains FAT? That is the reason you cannot merge some federal universities to reduce administrative costs!
In Southeast, FUTO can be the engineering campus for UNN with no Vice Chancellor, pro chancellor, etc but just a Dean or provost. The Fed Agriculture Umudike becomes the Agric School of UNN. Like in the California system which Rwanda copied, you end up having just two vice chancellors who will run all the federal universities in SE. You save costs on cars, housing, etc and those will go into real learning. Interestingly, like in the California system, you increase enrollment. Think about it, if Amazon has one CFO (chief financial officer) to serve more than 1 million workers, why should each university have a bursar when 1-2 can handle per geopolitical region?
Beyond Replacing ASUU with CONUA, Fixing Nigeria’s University System Must Follow This Path
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There are many things we can do, but we must first accept that the current system is not working, and therefore due for change.
The only way to pay professors well here is by allowing the universities to generate those funds, any other arrangement will always falter. All the good things you desire will be realistic when we are responsible for making them happen, at least you have anyone else to blame for your misfortunes or lack of success.
We do a lot of unreal things here, we are due for a proper reform across board. This is not how to run a country.