BARELY one month after President Bola Tinubu approved establishment of a University of Environmental Sciences in Ogoniland, Rivers State, after a meeting with Ogoni leaders and other top personages from Rivers State, the same Federal Government headed by Tinubu recently announced another University of Environmental Sciences, for Ekiti State.

That one will be sited in Iyin-Ekiti. For those of us that may not have connected the dots, Iyin-Ekiti is the home town of the late military governor of defunct Western State, General Adeyinka Adebayo, whose son, Richard Adebayo was governor of Ekiti State from 1999-2003. Senate Majority Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, is also from Iyin-Ekiti.

And last week, the news hit the airwaves that the same Federal Government, arguably becoming a leviathan under the present dispensation has “adopted” the Tai Solarin University of Education, TASUED, in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State. I wondered about the adoption. Was TASUED an orphaned institution? Expectedly, many stakeholders, including the Ogun State Government, were elated over the development.

As a trained teacher, I have always been passionate and monitored issues about education in our country. My deepest periods of agony were in 2020-21, when the COVID-19 pandemic and ASUU strike forced schools, including universities and polytechnics to shut down. I still remember what I experienced as a parent, watching children and wards who were in these schools wake up on a daily basis to do just nothing, eat, play football, and come back home to eat and sleep. For months, this went on. I could understand COVID-19, but the ASUU strike of that period didn’t make sense to me and still doesn’t.

I had written earlier that universities are serious businesses that should not be undertaken except with utmost, unflagging seriousness and commitment. This is because, nestled at the apex of the nation’s educational system, they exist with the sole purpose of nurturing and culturing the brightest and best intellects of society for continued, sustainable national development. Take a look at the the institutions that we call first generation universities, like University of Ibadan, UI; Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; Obafemi Awolowo University (former University of Ife); and University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Virtually all these schools suffer greatly from one inadequacy or the other, which is as a result of improper funding. I was told sometime ago that development plan of OAU, Ife, was in three phases, such that Phase 3 of the institution’s development will see it catering to the academic needs of no less than 100,000 students. May I ask the leviathan Federal Government: at what stage of its planned development is OAU, Ife now? As of 2021/2022 academic session, OAU had a total student enrollment of approximately 34,036 students.

This enrollment figure shows the university is stuck in Phase 2 of its development. Why is the university stuck? No need to look far for the answer — it’s poor funding. The same malaise is affecting all the other universities, state-owned or federal-owned. From UNIBEN in Benin to BUK in Kano, to the University of Maiduguri and others, all the universities in the country,  apart from the privately-owned are locked in the funding malaise.

It is the funding issue that is at the bottom of the never-ending strikes by university lecturers in ASUU and the non-teaching staff in NASU.

Therefore, it makes very little sense to me to continue building universities that WILL not be adequately funded. We must remind the wielders of power at the federal and state levels that establishment of universities should not be taken the same way this government is doing palliatives; universities are far more serious undertakings. Also universities are not gifts to be given out whimsically the way it seems now.

In fact, Emeritus Professor of History, Akinjide Osuntokun, who was also a former ambassador of Nigeria to Germany, recently called on federal and state governments and private entities to stop establishing new universities unless they are fully prepared to fund them. 

He also urged stakeholders to prioritise funding of  existing universities, and emphasized that adequate funding is a necessary tool to pivot the affairs of all institutions towards achieving the primary aim of establishing them. He spoke at the maiden convocation ceremony of Bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science and Technology, Ikere-Ekiti, BOUESTI. When people like Osuntokun speak, especially on universities, people in government should listen.

The government should stop donating universities the way confetti is sprayed on a bridal train, because I am not convinced that it can and will fund them adequately. To this end, I want to urge Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State not to hands-off funding TASUED following adoption by the FG. In any case, I am of the opinion that TASUED has run very well since inception. Adoption by the FG should be a blessing, not a curse, as I anticipate federal mandarins invading the university and imposing appointments and deployments in the name of federal character, which has not helped any of the so-called federal universities. TGIF.