By Adesina Wahab

Attrition of staff and relocation (‘Japa’ Syndrome) without replacing them with new hands is gradually turning the nation’s universities to shadows of their former selves and making it difficult for them to compete globally.

Also, the poor renumeration of staff and grossly inadequate facilities have made it difficult to attract new hands to join the system.

This was stated on Monday by the Acting Head of the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, the University of Lagos, Dr Mrs Faith Babalola, at a briefing to mark the beginning of events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the department.

According to her, the department, which had persons such as Dr Ogbonnanya Onu, the immediate past Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation as among the pioneering students, also boasted of great academic staff, but lack of facilities, poor funding among others, have made things difficult.

“The pioneer class of 1973 was groomed by one of the best assemblage of academic hands trained in notable institutions of the world, namely A.F Ogunye (PhD Waterloo), O.O Omatete ( PhD California), A.A. Susu (PhD Stanford), A.A Jeje (PhD MIT), V.I Ibberson (PhD London) and F.O Olatunji (MSc London).

“In recent years, however, the challenges of poor funding and neglect have negatively affected the department in no small way. Attrition of staff and relocation without replacement has posted a great threat to the proper running of the department. Some aging equipment in the laboratories need to be replaced with state-of-the-art hardware.

“For instance, due to lack of some vital equipment, a thesis that can require the use of some special equipment may be modified towards theoretical. We are quick in the country to wonder why our universities are not ranked among the best in the world. Those saying that should first rank the input before ranking the output. Let them consider what universities in America get as funding with what we get in Nigeria before accusing us of poor performance,” she said.

Babalola called on alumni and corporate bodies to come to the aid of the department, promising that they would not be disappointed.

“Let such people and bodies go and buy equipment and donate such to the department and we promise judicious use of those things. They can also institute endowment funds. We need to rise up quickly before the education sector collapses totally,” she added.