Poor Funding, Reason Nigerian Varsities Not Among World Best- NUC

The Executive Secretary of National Universities Commission, NUC, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, has said that poor funding was the main reason Nigerian universities were not ranked among the best in the world.

He also stated that any university that loses reputation must have lost everything in its existence, saying the commission was planning to put in place stringent measures that would curtail the proliferation of universities, especially by state governors, and ensure there was adequate funding for any such universities.

This is even as the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU, lamented that teaching staff were taking over their jobs through the composition of committees by the university management where the teaching staff were made to head such committees.

While the leadership of SSANU paid the NUC Executive Secretary a visit in his office, in Abuja, he advised that any time the association was entering into any agreement with the Federal Government, such an agreement should be one that will be implementable as funding has become a key challenge to why Nigerian universities are not among the highly ranked universities in the world.

Prof. Rasheed noted with regret that in a particular university in the South-South, the state government released to the management about N452 million to run the institution in the previous year, and later slashed the money the next year to N91 million, with a further slash to N40 million.

On the concern raised by SSANU President, Comrade Mohammed Ibrahim, who led the delegation that state governors were proliferating universities as if it had become a constituency project, the NUC boss said the governors were interested in leaving a legacy but not investing in the established universities.

He, however, expressed optimism that the new NUC Act would give the commission more powers, unlike the existing one, adding that there should be a master plan to be submitted and approved by the commission before any new university was established.

He debunked the claim that some of the commissions set up by the NUC in the universities were dominated by teaching staff, against non-teaching staff.

He said the association believed in excellent service and doing things in the right way, adding that the voices of members of SSANU would only be heard when necessary…

“Our members are becoming more and more troubled by the recent developments coming out of the university system. Our members’ jobs are being taken over by so many committees in the universities.

” There is the issue of non-payment of salaries, especially for our members in state universities. Some have not received salaries for up to six months, yet we hear that NUC is giving accreditation to new state universities.

“NUC should ensure that our members are not languishing in their offices. We are also disturbed over the negative development of nonuniformity in the conditions of service in the universities. This is happening to the morale of our members. We call for a uniform standard in the universities.” He added