BY CHRIS OCHAYI

ABUJA-The Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission, NUC, Professor Julius Okojie, yesterday disclosed that the nation’s education sector, especially the tertiary sub-sector, has enjoyed greater funding under this administration in the last three years.

Professor Okojie, who made the remarks while speaking in Abuja, said the education system had recorded tremendous development and growth during the period under review because of the commitment of the present administration, led by President Goodluck Jonathan, towards funding it.

He said: “It is only recently, in the past two, three years, particularly, this last one year, during the regime of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan that we have put the thumb on the press button for a way forward to education.

“You will recall that we have the education summit. That summit examined all the issues that are involved at all levels of education. And for the first time, we had a president who sort out time for two days to chat with a cross sections of the stakeholders. And I must say that, as a result of that summit, so many things have started happening.

“With the positive review and re-direction of the objective of the Education Trust Fund, ETF, there is a greater and more efficient funding of tertiary education in this country.

“We talked about access, access is not just in terms of physical facilities.  If you don’t also have the relevant teachers’ quality and quantity, then you are going to have problem.

“At the lower level, the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, have funded a lot of projects of exposing teachers for short trainings and ensuring that they have the skills to teach.

“At the higher level, through this year, government has had a very major intervention in respect of improving the existing facilities, and creating new facilities for the right environment for teaching, learning and community development.

“So what happened is that it would appear that in this past three years, the funding for capital development in all federal universities is more than the total for the past ten years. It means that education before now does not have enough impact from whatever provisions government was making.

“Every sector of the economy is struggling for the very lean resources; no country ever had enough funds. As you know, most of the world towers are owing the World Bank, but we are saying, if there is fund from World Bank, it should be properly invested; we have $180million for the Step-B projects, which we have effectively deployed.

“Recently, the government has approved the N3 billion research grant for free access through the universities and other assisted facilities.

“In the past two years or three years, government facilitated in training programme of 4,000 academic staff. 3,000 of that internally and 1,000 others trained abroad. Government is of the notion that for us to have a very balanced education, you don’t have all the breeding in this country. 

“It is the climax of the whole setting when the government established nine new universities; they will be twelve in the not far future. Government is only just exercising its policy enunciation that every state should have a federal university to improve access.”