Don urges VCs to be prudent with spending

A Professor of Social History at Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo, Ezekiel Adeoti, has urged vice-chancellors of public universities to be more prudent in their spending of scarce school resources.

He also implored the institutions to explore alternative sources of funding outside of government to enable them to carry out their tripartite mandate of teaching, research and community service.

Adeoti gave the advice while delivering the 95th inaugural lecture series of the institution. He spoke on “Interrogating multi-dimensional crises in the management and funding of university education in Nigeria: A historian’s perspective.”

Although he noted that the crises in public universities are multi-dimensional, Adeoti said inadequate funding has been the major problem causing most of the crises, especially those between workers’ unions and the government.

He noted that the protracted crisis between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government over such issues as decayed infrastructure, poor remuneration, dearth of lecturers, and proliferation of state-owned universities, among others, were as a result of inadequate funding.

He said it was disheartening, for example, that ASUU’s industrial actions could last up to a total of 1,637 days, which is four years and five months, in 26 years from 1999 to date, with former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration witnessing the highest number, which was 637 days, followed by the Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, with 548 days.

The don also expressed concern over the criteria used in appointing vice-chancellors, saying they are mostly in favour of those in medicine, science and law, than those in humanities and management.

In LASU, for instance, the university teacher noted that no historian has ever been appointed as vice-chancellor since its establishment 40 years ago.

He pointed out that most of these issues cause crises, which, in turn, thwart genuine growth and development of university education, so much so that most Nigerian universities can’t compete favourably in the global space.

Adeoti listed some of the alternative areas universities could explore to raise funds and manage the system better including tuition, running remedial programmes, endowments, alumni associations, award of honorary degrees, and collaboration with private and government agencies, among others.

According to him, the only panacea to incessant crises in the nation’s tertiary institutions is adequate financing of public universities.

He emphasised that the government alone cannot successfully fund education, and tasked universities with the need to explore alternative sources.

He also stressed the need to wage war against corrupt practices and financial impropriety by university administrators and those entrusted with funds.