By DELE SOBOWALE

[Coming up: Wanted: national solution to the problem of kids who undertook unaccredited courses?]

But, there were only four or five private universities in Nigeria at the time and I had assumed that the problem would solve itself. Unfortunately, that turned out to be false optimism on my part. The problem got bigger and is rapidly getting out of hand.

More and more young people, like Seun, are being taken to the cleaners in universities –public and private.

For a lot of reasons – not all of which were the fault of private universities – a severe scarcity of teaching staff developed nationwide.

Among the causes of shortage of lecturers were the following:

Explosion of universities: As the population of Nigerian kids seeking varsity admission increased astronomically, federal and state governments responded two ways.

First public varsities were forced to admit more students than was advisable for quality education to be delivered. When that failed to solve the problem, they took the second step.

They increased the number of varsities nationwide. Then in 1999, the federal government granted licences to three private varsities. The chart below tells the story:

PERIOD                       YEARS         NUMBER OF                        UNIVERSITIES

1948-1978          30          13

1979-1998          21           20

1999-2013          14          95

TOTAL              65        128

It is clear that 75% of our varsities were established in the last 14 years alone; almost three times the number in the first 41 years of our history.

The question is: were we producing varsity lecturers fast enough to meet the needs of the universities? We will return to this issue several times.

Creation of states by military administrations had gone in tandem with the establishment of state varsities.

From only one university, in 1948, to five in 1964, the country raced to by 1978. As everybody remembers, the country went from three regions in 1960 to four in 1963.

Gowon created 12 states; Murtala Mohammed made them 19; Babangida carved the 19 into 30 and Abacha took us to 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

With the growth in establishment of varsities since 1948, the nation had failed to address the critical issue of supply of lecturers.

It is axiomatic that lecturers and researchers drive universities. For years, in Nigeria, they have been in short supply. It is akin to the country procuring a fleet of buses without the drivers to drive them.

So Seun is correct; we have gone full speed ahead to establish universities without a national policy aimed at producing the lecturers….