By Dayo Adesulu

Former Minister of Information and National Orientation, Professor Jerry Gana has lamented the poor students-lecturer ratio in the Nigerian university system, saying that it contradicts global practice of quality education.

Citing examples of global institutions, Gana said, “in most of the top best 200 universities, the staff-student ratios are amazingly very good.

“In fact for the first 10 top best universities in the world, the staff student ratios are as good as follows: California Institute of Technology and University of Chicago, both in the US have 6:9, University of Oxford has 11:6, while Harvard University has 8:9 students lecturer ratio.”

Professor Gana who stated this while delivering a keynote address at the 11th convocation ceremony of Covenant University, Ota, Ogun, said comparatively many universities have student-lecturer ratios of 1:300, just as Covenant University claimed it had a students lecturer ratio of 1:16.

To redress the situation, he listed provision of excellent infrastructure for teaching, learning and research, provision of excellent little art resources and employment of highly qualified and brilliant teaching or faculty staff as some of the distinctive characteristics of world class universities.

In his keynote address titled, “Improving Graduate Employability and Global Competitiveness: A Review of Nigerian Higher Education Delivery” Gana lamented that poor funding of the education sector had resulted in steady decline in the quality of products from tertiary institutions in the country.

He listed some of the challenges facing the sector to include poor access, poor students-faculty ratio, and poor linkage between academic and essential needs of the country among others.

Speaking further at the convocation, where a total 1, 495 graduated from institution, the keynote speaker appealed to the Federal government to raise the bar in the funding of education and make deliberate investment in character and integrity building

In his address to the convocation assembly, Dr David Oyedepo, the Chancellor of the Institution, said that in the drive for excellence, the University has continued to blazed the trail and extended the frontiers of knowledge through research

Oyedepo said that emphasis has been placed on converting research into tangible problem solving products and that such efforts have yielded laudable result

He urged the Federal Government to increase annual budgetary allocation to education because economic growth is only attainable through deliberate investment in quality education

”Nigeria can not have a desired change until our government starts investing massively in education,” Oyedepo said.

He said that education was a platform to produce highly skilled personnels that would drive economic growth.

Earlier, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Charles Ayo, disclosed that of the 1, 495 graduands that were awarded degrees, 708 were in the second class, 513 second class lower and 118 in third class honours categories, while 154 bagged post graduate degrees.

Prof Ayo said that the universty has instituted strategic goals that distinguished its students as clear leaders among the comity of universities not only in Nigeria but in African in general.

The don identifed some of the strategic goals as compulsory internship for all students to gain industry experience.

He added that graduands are offered additional certifications in ICT, leadership, entrepreneurship and foriegn language.