By Dele Sobowale

NOTE: Akwa Ibom; Ekiti and Kaduna states will serve to illustrate the problems. Akwa Ibom comes first in alphabetical order. Nothing more.

“Saturday PUNCH investigations showed that the state government had not been funding the Akwa Ibom State University adequately.   It was learnt that the state government only released N1.5bn for construction projects, expansion and renovation of academic blocks, including the acquisition of laboratory equipment in the university.”

PUNCH, November 8, 2014, p 12.

That story titled GOVT HOUSES COSTLIER THAN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES went on to reveal that Akwa Ibom State spent a total of N34bn on two projects – N16bn on the government house and N18bn on a Banquet Hall. On the latter, one must ask, how many banquets does the state government hold every year to justify that expenditure?

Then on November 13, 2014, Abimbola Adelakun, on the back page of the same PUNCH newspaper, in an article titled GOVERNOR MONEY-MISS-ROAD, drew attention to the N33bn Akwa  Ibom Stadium which was commissioned on Friday, November 7, 2014, by, who else?, President Goodluck Jonathan. Ms Adelakun’s grouse with the project, the same as mine, rested on the sense of priorities on display at that event. She wrote, and I agree, “Today, Akwa Ibom is rich; perhaps richer than several African countries put together. The state has a relatively small population and as Akpabio admitted, a [large] number of them are low-income earners.

In such a context, it is unsurprising that his dreams are easily exhausted that he resorts to building monuments to vanity.” I added “large” to her statement because unlike most commentators, I know Akwa Ibom inside-out. That is why it is always amusing to read comments by those who only visited Uyo and go on to conclude that an “uncommon” transformation has taken place. It is as foolish as assuming that Lagos City, Kaduna, Enugu or Jos represent the whole of Lagos, Kaduna, Enugu and Plateau states. Akwa Ibom is not different. Virtually all the resources had been concentrated on Uyo – leaving vast areas of the state as poor as before.

Nowhere is this more strongly illustrated than in the allocations to education. Again, I had been to the state university quite a few times and the most appropriate word to use is DISAPPOINTING. For a state which collected and spent N1 trillion in four years, the university is really appalling.

Last week, Professor Okebukola, former NUC Secretary, was reported to have said that the essential requirements are: facilities and staff. Both require a lot of money. The N1.5bn reportedly allocated to the state university, which might not even be fully released, are, by any measure simply inadequate to provide good facilities and to recruit quality staff. To develop individuals capable of establishing and operating space stations, Nigeria needs top quality people in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, engineering (in all its aspects), robotics, and computer science as well as nanotechnology. At the moment, there is probably no science department in the Akwa Ibom State University which has full accreditation. The students enrolled for the science courses are, to say the least, going to end up clutching “tissue paper” as certificates. No employer of labour, except the state government itself, can possibly employ them. The reasons are not difficult to understand.

University laboratory

During one of my visits, this year, to the state, I went to the science block and looked into the laboratories – especially Chemistry. What was there simply has to be seen to be disbelieved. Remembering our science laboratory at Igbobi College, in the late 1950s to early 1960s, when I left, I returned to Lagos to take a look again at Igbobi College. This secondary school is better equipped than the university laboratory. That leads to the question: what are the kids being taught and who is doing the teaching.

A casual stroll revealed that the university probably does not have the minimum four professors. An expert in robotics teaches physics because there aren’t many people holding doctorates in Physics in Nigeria. Granted, one must read a lot of physics to master robotics, but, the basic pure research will still be lacking. At any rate, in physics, as in every subject, nobody can be a master of every aspect. So, you need a cluster of them. They don’t exist in any department at Akwa Ibom State University.

Yet, the university offers over 22 courses to victims-students. By the time the N1.5bn is allocated to various needs, and we should not forget that university funds get embezzled, what is left for research cannot amount to N160 million or $1m. That is just about what a small university in the US would spend, in its science laboratories on re-agents or acids and bases alone in one month. Meanwhile, N68bn was spent on three projects; not to mention a cinema being subsidized. At N1.5bn per year; it will take 43 years before the state university gets as much money as that. By then Europeans might have left the earth to us!!

NEXT: Ekiti State University: graduating functional illiterates.