Agenda for Nigerian University Education

Agenda for Nigerian University Education

The Global Report on university education which appeared in NEWSWEEK (www.newsweekinternational.com) of September 15, 2003 is an excellent reference material for the Committees on Education in the Nigerian Houses of Assembly. The essays in that report stimulated my thinking to reflect on the agenda for Nigerian university education. The ASUU struggle is underpinned by a determination of the leadership to take the bull by the horns and strive in the direction of developing a road map for university education. The pertinent issues are recurrent because of the drawback of “gastric” thinking incessant in the national polity. Our politicians need serious proactive thoughts and action to move educational issues in the appropriate direction for national development. This is why I recommend they read the global report and attempt to situate the Nigerian scenario in the global picture.

No nation develops without its universities. The ability to solve national problems is gauged by the preparedness of the citadels of learning to engage in systematic appraisal of national issues and face them like the dynamite before the rock. No problem gets solved without good thinking and research-based solutions. Empirical and data-driven analytical researches will take Nigeria to heights most sceptics have never imagined. A lot of Nigerians seem to have given up being Nigerians in the national sense except where the posture provides individual sustenance. Who will bail the nation from automatic self-destruction from political ineptitude? Where is our hope in the future? Is it in the “rebranding propaganda”? No! It is in the educational revolution that is sustained by ASUU. The people in the education sector are mobilizing and revolting recurrently and persistently against the status quo. ASUU is thinking for the nation. “Good thinking, good product”. Good research oriented nation will beget a resourceful, progressive, great nation! The gimmick of a great nation evolving from goodness of its people is unflavoured and bland on the palate. The mundane goodness practiced by our political class will certainly not lead to the emergence of a great nation. The national culture has exalted those who grab the national cake and dole out crumbs as gifts to feed their sense of goodness. People of knowledge and competence are sidelined, frustrated and prevented from participating in national renewal. They are turned into political self-seeking individuals whose only joy stem from how much can be extracted from the national inefficient systems. The national “cow” is milked without care of the teat, the udder and the entire body. The national “cow” is ill and I called in the veterinarian. The evaluation of the clinical condition demands that we engage the theses of BARBARA KANTROWITZ (“Learning the Hard Way”) and VARTAN GREGORIAN (“The Secret of Our Success”) in NEWSWEEK (September 15, 2003). These theses did not assess the Nigerian background of educational “milk fever”, because of the “cow’s” hopelessness and seeming appearance like a “carcass” deserving of only a “post-mortem examination”.

By my thinking, the Nigerian university education is on a stalled ascendancy. The sector is populated by competent, well trained and self-motivated academics without adequate national drive and focus. The political cabals are imprisoning them in non-intellectual barricades where they lose their resourcefulness and sense of national direction and commitment. To help revamp university education through an understanding of our commitments, I examined the issues raised by the NEWSWEEK writers and identified cardinal points to be included among the agenda for university education:

• This nation will never achieve any pre-eminence without a network of universities.
• The path to sustainable development is created by the capacity for research.
• The federal government has the responsibility to provide adequate funds for basic research.
• The federal government should promote private philanthropy by private sector motivation.
• The universities should be given more autonomy without outright privatization.
• Democratization of the universities should ensure that diversity is promoted so that no one suffers disadvantage because of political, economic, ethnic or religious identity.
• Teaching should be integrated with research and the culture of research imbibed at all levels.
• The universities should engender intellectual competition and strive for excellence.
• University teachers should never be turned into unmotivated public servants.
• Our universities should be where the best professors want to stay and the best qualified students seek admission because of the available facilities and hands-on experiences.
• The university system should have the vibrancy to generate new ideas and allow the best ideas to win.
• International students should be attracted to our universities to help export our national image and encourage international co-operation.
• Administration of the universities should evolve a template for governance that promotes national ideals.
• The university should impact the society through community service.
• Our university graduates should be prepared to meet the challenges of a developing nation with the capacity to understand problems and find solutions.
• The effectiveness of our universities to achieve identified national goals should not be guesswork and therefore, a longitudinal product/system analysis is needed.

We ought to have universities where skills are thought and acquired for national development and this is important if vision 20-20-20 is to be realisable. Our “brand” emanates from the universities. This is where to start the campaign. “Good product, good thinking”. Who and what our universities produce make us the “brand” we are.

As ASUU engages the federal government, we as a people should be clear in our understanding of where we are heading to. The above agenda can help us clarify our mission in the universities and help build a nation we are proud of. Our pledge is not to destroy what we cannot rebuild. In a poetic expression:

If the cow is dead without the calf

Because the milk is not in the cistern for the calf

There will not be a herd

And the kingdom of cattle

Will have the future of the dead in eternal sleep

Let the cow live through the struggle for milk

The struggle continues even in our fears for the cow

Our fears abate that the guns will shoot and heads will roll

Have we not got the defence minister who is a General

And the militants are no longer military

But civil in their civilian demand for equity

The struggle continues even with IAP

The equity that justifies the worker is with us

Though we fight for future

We are neither at war nor in battle

We are inflamed to heal the wound

We are not engaged in suicide

Reminiscent of a malignant fever

Reacting to heal by boiling over

To cause a systemic halt and death

Professor Ikechukwu Igbokwe

Department of Veterinary Pathology

University of Maiduguri

Maiduguri.

July 23, 2009.

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