Prof. Tunji Olaopa, the chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), on Wednesday, described as criminal the National Universities Commission’s conduct of licencing so many institutions when the current ones lack significant financial arrangements.
Olaopa, who stated this while delivering the 16th Convocation Lecture of Lead City University in Ibadan on Wednesday, also bemoaned the country’s university growth, calling it a troubling tendency.
While delivering the lecture, entitled “The Renewed Hope Agenda and the Imperative of Repositioning Nigerian Universities,” Olaopa said the government enters policy-making processes without the solid hand that intellectual and empirical contributions may have provided to consolidate action research and policy intelligence.
He observed that the research outputs of universities and other tertiary institutions have become increasingly barren, becoming merely cosmetic and ceremonial.
“Gone were the days when government policy decisions were fortified by active town and gown engagements; when the likes of the late Dr Pius Okigbo and Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade would deploy sound econometric analysis that the likes of Chief Simeon Adebo, Allison Ayida, et al., could count upon in formulating Nigeria’s development planning.
“To this extent, the Nigerian education landscape is not far from global education development. However, licencing so many universities under the political and politicising imperative when the existing ones do not have any firm regulatory oversight or significant funding arrangements is just criminal,” he said.
Olaopa also identified some of the issues affecting education and impeding the country’s development. According to him, they include the intractable issue of education financing in Nigeria, the lack of full autonomy for public universities and the upgrade of universities’ governing councils as employers. he also mentioned the adversarial model of industrial action that locks ASUU into a degrading and unproductive conflict with university management and the government.
