Professor Olu Obafemi steadily glows to harbor and anchor in his incandescent flavour of truth.
Collective bargaining
When a new and future negotiation takes off, there are basic minimum funding benchmarks that must be tabled for discussion.
The recommended basic funding for education of 26 per cent of Annual Appropriation that UNESCO establishes, one which ASUU and other stakeholders in education have perennially canvassed;
Other suggestions, vide Halidu G.S, (2015). He proposed funding a modern university system by the Federal Government who should allocate not less than 26 per cent of the total budgetary allocation to the education sector. On the awareness of the capital intensiveness of university education, government should invest at least 15 per cent of GDP or 40 per cent of education budget in alignment with World Bank (2010) proposal;
The Federal Government’s investment in the universities must be seen as the nation’s responsibility for the production and dispersal of knowledge, up skilling and cultivation of the nation’s human minds and civilisation, which a nation inexorably requires. This should be given without the universities being hamstrung with such negative attachment of strings. The investment should be committed under lawful university autonomy and disbursed, responsibly, by the Governing Council of each university without fetters.
All of these, added to the strident and incessant nudging by stakeholders in the education sectors who have one way or the other, joined voices to those of labour unions, in beating deafening drums to government ears not to even think of abandoning their responsibility of funding universities.
Deborah Dan-Awoh of Punch reports recently (‘reject-funding-of-varsities- August, 5,2023) that” Stakeholders in the education sector, including the West Africa Office of the Association office of African Universities, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board and the National Universities Commission have launched a Framework of Action for Accelerating Excellence in the Nigerian higher education system”. They have also admonished government to not recoil (can they?) from the funding of higher education in the country” The personalities behind these efforts at advocating for ‘sustainable? funding of higher education and judicious disbursement of allocated resources by higher education authorities include Professor Peter Okebukola, President of the Global University Netwwork, the Registrar of JAMB, Prof Is’Haq Oloyede who called for strategic bridge- building to advance academic excellence.
Most pertinent to our discourse here is the affirmation by the stakeholders that only ‘improved resourcing of the system and significant improvement in the welfare of higher education staff’ will quicken the space of attaining academic excellence and dissuade government from shunning the path of abdication of its ‘responsibility to properly fund higher education in Nigeria.
Other sources of funding
From the above, it must be clear that I totally align myself with the view that Federal Government can realistically fund federal universities, if it applies its resources prudently, responsibly and appropriately. The important thing is to cultivate the appropriate mindset, political will and consciousness of the values inhering Higher Education and its inextricable link with the nation’s socio-economic requisites for national development in a knowledge society.
Exceedingly pertinent to this position of the link of education to economic growth is the very enriching publication by Lawanson Olukemi and Umar Dominic (2020) titled ‘Education Expenditure–Led Growth: Evidence from Nigerian’ which proposes that ‘education foster economic growth”. The study though on education in general, analysed the impactful nature of Government expenditure on all levels of education and surmised that “there is co-integration between total government education expenditures, primary, secondary and tertiary education expenditure and economic growth”.
They therefore recommend, in tandem with our proposition above, that government should massively invest in education at all levels as a way of indirectly propelling and galvanising economic growth of the nation.
However, there are numerous other opinions on the ground around the much-orchestrated, government-induced views that the business of running a university is too enormous for government alone to fund and thus, other sources of funding must be found. My contention is that, given the inclusive nature of universities, support from other sources can be cautiously admitted and not built around direct funding.
For instance, ASUU carried out the research in the early nineties to propose the two per cent compulsory tax on private companies to be set aside to support universities. This is the originating source of Educational Trust Fund (ETF), established by Act No.7 of 1993 as amended by Act No 40 of 1998 and now replaced with the Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act of 2011.
This Fund, originally meant to be disbursed to generally improve and maintain physical infrastructure for teaching, learning, research and publications, instructional material and equipment, has now been interpreted and perceived as an extension of government’s direct funding in a way that enables government to shirk or relegate its capital appropriation to the universities.
The point I am making here is that any other strategies may be established for further support for universities in terms of maintenance, research and content development as supplementary (only) to government’s main duty of funding recurrent and capital expenditure of Federal and State tertiary institutions.
Other support funding that may be helpful to universities enterprises and which should be tenuous and peripheral to government sources of funding can be solicited and admitted, mindful always of both the positive and negative implications and consequences of such support to the larger interest, vision, ideals and universal culture of the university system.
Some of the funding alternatives proposed
The students themselves and their parents and guardians—this is, by and large an advocacy of students paying school fees both at the level of tuition fees, costs which will include feeding, hostel accommodation, transportation, books, department and faculty charges and numerous levies. Some studies have put these payments at between N500,000 and N1 million per student! This is, for me, the most callous of options and totally untenable in a democracy whose constitution guarantees government’s delivery of public good and services. This is the consideration which motivated ASUU to ask government to calculate these costs and pay to Councils for management. This must again go back to the collective bargaining process, post implementation of Briggs Committee Recommendations.
Funding support from the university itself through Internally Generated Revenue deploying commercial ventures, hotels, farms, consultancies, small scale profit yielding enterprises and petty companies. The effect of the distractions from such enterprises should be taken into consideration before embarking on this education-for-profit.
In any case, government has asked universities to turn over outcomes from these engagements to the Government coffers from where a lean percentage may be reverted to the university accounts, through an invidious regime called Treasury Single Account (TSA).
Endowments, donations and structural support from critical stakeholders, philanthropists, finance gurus and institutions, corporations, linkages, research corporations and benign foreign foundations. Again, these bodies must be cautiously engaged, especially those that are linked with multinational, neoliberal institutions.
The Alumni Association can also be engaged. Well organised Alumni bodies have been found to undertake massive structural projects for their Alma Mater. This must be the rationale of making alumnae form part of the university Governing councils.
Again, care must be taken not to compromise the university ideal, standard and quality on the altar of what may appear to be hanging fruits from philanthropists and do-gooders with various hegemonic ideological motivations or intents.
A scheme ‘whereby all stakeholders should participate in funding of university education in Nigeria was recommended by Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo (1919).
To be concluded next Friday.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
