Abeokuta – The Director of the Lagos Business School, Prof. Pat Utomi, on Friday blamed the decay in the nation’s tertiary education on the incursion of the military into Nigerian politics.

Utomi spoke at a convocation lecture at the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (UNAAB), saying that it was  regrettable that the military interregnum was characterised by “love-hate relationship between the military and the academia’’.

Utomi, the  presidential candidate of Social Democratic Mega Party (SDMP), spoke on the topic “Education, Institutions and Nation Building’’.

“In my own view, tertiary education fell into bad times because of how policies evolved under the military. There was a love-hate relationship between the military and the academic community.

“In some ways, young officers who had political power in the 1970s wanted to democratise access to the academia. This, in principle, was not bad, but the process was flawed,’’ he said.

Utomi noted that the military forced universities to increase intake exponentially; caused fees to be set aside, and did not increase funding accordingly.

While stressing what he called “absence of rigour in decision-making’’ by the military, he recalled the setting up of several panels and commissions by successive military administrations as sources of policy choice.

Utomi, however, said that although all the panels and commissions noted the importance of higher education and advised on appropriate funding, their recommendations were never implemented.

“While the Etsu Nupe Panel asked that 30 per cent of budgets go to education and the Vision 2020 Committee supported the UNESCO minimum of 26 per cent, reality has been far different.

“Not only has real allocation been often below six per cent but that which is allocated is inefficiently and corruptly misapplied,’’ he said.

Utomi recalled the period when the education minister, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, had to cry out about the collapse in the education sector.

According to him, no sustainable progress can take place in Nigeria until adequate attention is paid to education.

“Higher education is even more peculiar in that it determines the higher level of the needs of the leadership for progress,’’ he said. (NAN)