There is no doubt that our Universities in Nigeria are well below international standards and the reason for this is not far-fetched, the Federal Government cannot continue funding education by paying salaries alone at the detriment of revitalization.
If Government continues to fund all education-Polytechnics, Colleges of education, Universities, we will continue to get poor education and none of our Universities will rank globally.
There are currently 168 Universities in Nigeria, the federal has 43, States have 47 while the remaining 78 belongs to private Universities owned by individuals and faith based organizations.
Over the years, Nigerian Government effort in the education system has been rendered ineffective by constant strikes by the Academic Staff Union of the Universities (ASUU) on issues bothering about earned allowance, revitalization and payment platforms.
ASUU had gone on strikes every year in the past 21 years since the country adopted democracy with the exception of 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019.
Since the commencement of warning strike on March 9, 2020 and indefinite strike March 29, 2020 till now, the total number of days spent on strike is now 301 days in a single year.
These strikes has not only undermined our education system but has deprived us of having international students who would rather manage in their country rather than come to an archaic system where epileptic academic calendar is the other of the day.
Nigerian lecturers are poorly paid compared to other advanced countries while lack of infrastructures is a major bane to teaching, research and innovation.
It will be wicked to ask the striking lecturers to continue working on empty stomachs but once the government has shown seriousness in responding to certain abnormally, the best thing to do is to suspend the strike for the sake of implementation.
On the part of the Students’, it is totally unfair to keep them at home for nine month not forgetting that the system has kept some of them with five year programme for seven years while those on four years struggle to graduate in six years or less. For how long are we going to continue managing this illness?
For the Postgraduate Students, it is another barrier entirely as many ended up abandoning their programmes for Private Universities to get a PhD or Master degree within the stipulated time.
To solve this seemingly problem, government should grant Public universities- Federal and State autonomy and focus on other areas of Education.
Granting Public universities autonomy means that individual Universities will now take decision on how they will like to be paid whether IPPIS or UTAS as well as how much to charge students.
In other advance countries, the position of a professor is not permanent as the number of grants received guarantees your stay in that position.
In Nigeria, so many professors have never won a grant talkless of contributing to high rated journals like Scopus and Impact factor. For how long will government continue to accommodate inefficiency in the educational sector?
It will be wise for the government to look into the issue of poor wages of lecturers and tackle persistent strikes once and for all; allow ASUU members to be a judge and the judged in their court by granting them autonomy.
SCOPUS and Impact factor are not journals.