By Dele Sobowale
The cost of building many government houses in Nigeria is far higher than what it takes to build many universities…PUNCH, November 8.

The PUNCH story, starting from the front page, continuing on pages 12 and 13, focused on four state governors – Akpabio (Akwa Ibom), Dickson (Bayelsa), Fayemi (Ekiti) and Yero (Kaduna). But, the list could just as easily be extended by four more. To be quite candid, of the four, the one I find most surprising is Fayemi. Hopefully, the opportunity will present itself to ask him why he thought a new government house was one of the most urgent needs of Ekiti – which is one of the poorest in the country. However, it must be pointed out that the N3.3bn he spent in Ekiti could not have completed a wing of Akwa Ibom’s N16bn; which was accompanied by an N18bn banquet hall; making N34bn in total, or the boys quarter of Bayelsa’s N24bn behemoth.

By comparison, the Federal Government of Nigeria, under President Jonathan, established eleven universities, since 2011, and each was given a take-off grant of only N2bn. Meanwhile, all the states of Nigeria have state universities in dire need of funds to secure accreditation for most of the courses they now undertake.

For instance, there is no single state university in Nigeria, LASU included, which offers law or medicine and which also has full accreditation. Our future Attorney Generals and Chief Medical Directors are being trained in schools which should have been closed long ago. The reasons are not hard to discover.

In that same report, Professor Peter Okebukola, a former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, NUC, was quoted as saying that, “The requirements are essentially facilities and staff. Both need money to put in place. However, in the case of staff, a long-term investment is needed to procure quality staff.” In virtually no state of Nigeria, today, do we have the commitment to put quality facilities and staff in place. Again, the reasons are not too obscure.

Most governors, even if they serve two terms, are typical Nigerian politicians. They think short-term and they want to maximize the opportunity to amass wealth in the quickest possible time. To the best of my knowledge, only one governor (name withheld) had attempted to invest for the long-term when establishing his own state university. He had sent, with state government scholarship, highly intelligent indigenes abroad to acquire education, up to Doctorate degree level, in the leading edge technologies, like robotics, computer engineering etc, with the hope that they would form the nucleus of a unique Nigerian university of technology. Those sent abroad were still there when his tenure expired and the future lecturers and professors of leading edge technology went their separate ways – partly on account of the new governor’s passion for a grandiose Governor’s Mansion. The university has since joined the list of those offering sub-standard education to Nigerian youths – who have been routinely declared unemployable. The total cost of sending close to 24 highly gifted Nigerians abroad, to be educated to Ph.D level, from figures available to me, was less than N1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, we are told that Government Houses consumed the following sums in ascending order.

Ekiti -N3.3bn, Kaduna -N9.6b, Akwa Ibom -N16bn, Bayelsa -N24bn.

Apparently, for our “Chief Servants”, in the states, their own comforts in palaces count for more than the future of their own people – which hinges on better education of the populace in a world increasingly dominated by knowledge workers.

That several governors have got their priorities wrong, by erecting ill-considered palaces is bad enough, the structures will henceforth constitute a drain on the resources of their states. It is invariably true that the more stupendous a structure, the higher the cost of maintenance. Over the next 10 years, each of these monstrous edifices will require about the same amount for their upkeep.

Under normal circumstances, that would have been scandalous enough. But, circumstances are not now normal and financial normalcy is many years removed from us. With crude now under $80 per barrel, and trending downwards, the revenue allocated to states had tapered off considerably and is set to nose-dive even more.

Clearly, funding the maintenance of these monstrosities will require an even greater percentage of state revenue.