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Leadership and the Challenges of Higher Education in Nigeria
By Senator Babafemi Ojudu
Being the Fifth Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (SSANU FUNAAB) Distinguished Lecture on 31st of October 2012
Protocols
I assume that you all read the recent story in?some?Nigerian newspapers?credited to the Chairman of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors in Nigeria, Dr. Wale Babalakin, who stated that Nigerians spends about N160 billion every year to educate her citizens in Ghanaian universities. If this was not annoying enough, Babalakin added that this amount is expended annually over about 75, 000 Nigerian students, a number which is only the size of about three big Nigerian public universities. But that is not all. It is worse than that. But not in the way Babalakin rendered it. He said that Nigeria?s budget for education in 2011 was not up to the N160 billion which Nigerian students spend in a year in Ghanaian universities. What he obviously had in mind was the amount of money that the Federal Ministry of Education spent last year on Federal Universities. Still, that is not correct. Nigeria spent a little more than that on all the 24 federal universities and the 9 newly-created federal universities.
This year, Nigeria will spend almost N200 billion on all the 33 old and new federal universities, not counting the National Open University (NOU). This is N40 billion more than what the 75, 000 Nigerian students will spend this year on acquiring university education in Ghana. In the 2012 budget, the federal government allocated N400. 15 billion to education. The implication is that 75, 000 Nigerian students in Ghana will spend almost half of?the entire amount of money that?the federal government will spend on education this year.
Unfortunately, the reality might even be worse than this. A special report by the?Daily Trust?indicated that the total remittances by Nigerians to our students in Ghana, including?school fees and living expenses, may be up to $2 billion?- that is N320 billion, twice the amount mentioned by Babalakin.?Let me ask you?as?members of a university community, whether it is N160 billion or N320 billion, is this good news?
Let us start by pursuing this comparison with Ghana further?through the?history of higher education in both countries. Nigeria and Ghana both started their first universities?in 1948. Interesting enough, the University College, Ibadan,?would have been the only university to be established in British West Africa in 1948 but for the protest by the people of the Gold Coast colony. Both Ibadan and the University College of the Gold Coast were established on the recommendations of the Asquith Commission on Higher Education in the then British colonies. The Commission was set up in 1943 to make recommendations on the setting up of University Colleges in?the?British colonies in association with the University of London. The West African Commission in charge of this task in the sub-region was chaired by Rt. Hon. Walter Elliot. The commission?published a majority report?recommending?one University College each for Nigeria and Gold Coast. The minority report, on the contrary, recommended a single University College for the whole of British West Africa to be established in Ibadan. The British government accepted the minority report and decided that only a single university would be established for the whole of West Africa in Ibadan.
But the people of Gold Coast protested?and told the British government that they couldalso?support a University College in their colony. This was what led to the reversal of the decision and produced two University Colleges in British West Africa in 1948, one in Nigeriaand another in Ghana. Both later became the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, and the University of Ghana, Legon, respectively. Today, Legon remains the oldest and the largest of the six public universities in Ghana. While up till the early 1980s, Ibadan led the league of Africa?s most prestigious universities including the University of Ghana,?and?Makarere University, Uganda, University of Nairobi, Kenya, and University of Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania ? the last three?were?all established in 1961 and?became part of University of East Africa in 1963. If the University of Ibadan was the leading light of the most prestigious universities in modern Africa from the late 1940s, what has happened to Ibadan, in particular,?and higher education in Nigeria,?in general, forcing?Nigerian students to?go to?Legon and other universities in Ghana?
It?is obvious that Nigerians are interested in the comparison with Ghana because we assume that we had,?and should have,?a university system that?is?be better than and far more dynamic than that of Ghana. But the capital flight?-?without comparable human knowledge transfer to Nigeria?-?is even worse when we look at the statistics regarding Nigerian students in schools in Europe and the United States. In the United Kingdom alone,?Vanguard?recently reported that in 2010, Nigerians fuelled the UK education sector to the tune of N246 billion, which represented over 60 percent of the amount budgeted for education in 2012 by the Federal Government. I am sure we all know that a large percentage of Nigerian students attending universities in Europe and America are children of the members of the elite who are supposed to make, execute or implement educational policies in the area of higher education in Nigeria, or, in fact, the political leaders who are responsible to making the crucial political decision that can rescue higher education in Nigeria. Therefore, I will ask a third question, why are our leaders standing by as higher education continues to suffer a precipitous fall?
In this lecture, I intend to?explore some?answers to these questions in looking at the role of leadership in the context of the challenges of higher education in contemporary Nigeria. While I will concentrate mostly on political leadership, I will also pay some attention to other relevant forms of leadership, including even leadership within the academy.
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Leadership and?Human Capital Development
Let me start the discourse on leadership and human capital development with the wisdom of John Gardner, educator, public official and political reformer, whose belief in society?s potential was his guiding force. Gardner said that ?In questions of mind, there is no medium term: either we look for the best or we live with the worst.??Indeed, the reality is Nigeria has been that since we abandoned looking for the best, we have had to live with the worst. If you remember that a military head of state once told us that the best candidate may not win the presidential election in Nigeria, then you will understand why we have had, in the words of Gardner, to live with the worst.
The centrality of leadership in mobilising human capital has been recognised throughout human history. The ancient and modern history of leaders is replete with stories of vision, courage, enterprise, capacity, tenacity and originality. While several factors, physical, non-physical and human,?are almost always at play in determining the fate and fortune of societies, the role of leadership is fundamental in that, in most cases, leadership, particularly political leadership, whether good or bad, can determine the destiny of a nation.
Without dwelling on the elaborate and multi-various dimensions of leadership, I am particularly interested here in locating the relationship of leadership and human capital development and then linking that to the how?this?is connected to confronting the challenges of higher education in contemporary Nigeria. There are some crucial qualities that a good leader must have. These include vision, integrity, dedication or commitment, competence, discernment, creativity, assertiveness, fairness, openness and humility. All of these and more are important in creating a vision of a good society, recognising what needs to be done to build one, mobilising human and material resources to build such a society and confronting every challenge that is encountered in the process. As Bernard Montgomery, the British Field Marshal who took the German surrender in northern Germany at the end of the Second World War, stated, ?Leadership is the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.?
The capacity to rally men and women to a common purpose and inspire them with confidence cannot be done by anyone who does not, fundamentally, believe in human agency as the bedrock of society. In the immortal words of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, man (that is, a human being) is the measure of all things. Therefore, a leadership that recognises this and have the vision to transform society would make the development of human capital at the centre-piece ofits development paradigm.?This is because strategic leadership involves the ?ability to anticipate,envision, ?maintain ?flexibility, think ?strategically, ?and ?work with ?others ?to initiate changes ?that ?will ?create ?a ?viable ?future?.
At this point, let me illustrate my argument with perhaps the most eloquent example in recent human history. The question can be posed: How did the United States of America overtake every other preceding civilisation?to become the greatest power in the world?-?while creating the strongest military, the biggest industrial machine the world has?ever seen, the best global universities and the biggest middle class in human history at the turn of the 20th?century? In fact, we can shorten this question by asking, why was the 20th?century an American century?
These questions can be answered by understanding the relationship of leadership and human capital development. At the dawn of the 20th?century there was evidently a great rivalry between the biggest powers in the world and the most modern industrial nations, particularly the United States, Germany and Britain.?The three kept a close watch on one another so that they could supersede the others. As the United States sent high-ranking commissions to Britain and Germany to study the fundaments of their society,?so as to be able to use the knowledge to ensure economic greatness and overall global supremacy for the United States, Britain also sent a similar commission to the United States.?By the 1850s, the US and Britain were close in per capita income and were fiercely contesting in the global product markets. For a nation that was the colonial overlords of the United States only a century earlier, Britain did not enjoy this competition.
For a long time, the focus?of analysis or examination of one another that the three great nations conducted in relation to economic greatness was technology and physical capital. Most economists of this era, industrialists and also social thinkers were largely in agreement about what constituted the engines of economic growth. But by the start of the 20th?century, a revolution occurred in the thinking of the leaders of these societies. They recognised, through careful introspection and a watchful attention to the tide of history and the emerging international socio-economic and political dynamics, that it was no longer true that capital and technology fundamentally drove economic greatness. They recognised that there were indeed two?crucial factors that were and will always be at the bottom of economic greatness: people and the training of people.?In the modern phrase, this meant human capital development.
The leaders the?realised?that ensuring higher education for people, particularly making sure that people had secondary and higher education, would greatly enhance economic production. As?Claudia?Goldin articulates it,
For the first time in history the post-literacy schooling of the masses?-?at the secondary and higher levels?-?was perceived to greatly enhance economic production. Education might uplift, build moral fibre, enhance art, literature, and culture, and produce public officials, as even the ancients knew. The novel concern at the dawn of the twentieth century was that post-literacy training could make the ordinary office worker, bookkeeper, stenographer, retail clerk, machinist, mechanic, shop-floor worker, and farmer more productive, and that it could make the difference between an economic leader and a laggard.
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This brought the modern concept of the wealth of nations through the recognition of the fact that capital as embodied in people, that is, human capital,?is the foundation of all growth.?If all the industrial nations shared this knowledge, why did the United States emerge in the 20thcentury as the most vibrant economy and the biggest power in the world? The truth is that while the industrial world recognised the importance of universal literary, only the United States at the start of the 20th?century ensured that a large percent of its citizenry had post primary school education and also higher education. By the era of the Second World War when the United States emerged as the strongest, most vibrant nation in the world, it became evident to the rest of the industrial world and, eventually, to the rest of the world, that investment in human capital at the post-primary and also post-secondary level is the surest way to ensure economic growth and the overall development of any modern society. First, the European nations, and eventually, the rest of us, realised the lessons of what?Goldin calls the human-capital century. Some have now caught up with the US and a few are even surpassing the US in this?recognition. China is a great example.
However, as Goldin reminds us:
For the twentieth century to become the human-capital century required vast changes in educational institutions, a commitment by governments to fund education, a readiness by taxpayers to pay for the education of other people?s children, a belief by business and industry that formal schooling mattered to them, and a willingness on the part of parents to send their children to school (and byyouths to go).
We must count ourselves lucky in this part of Nigeria,?in?that, at the start of our modern political life, we had leaders who understood the role of education in the modern world, including particularly the role of higher education in creating economic prosperity and protecting human freedom and the enjoyment of the best things of life. These leaders?encapsulated?these?in the idea of egalitarianism. Even though the University of Ibadan already existed in this region of the country, they decided to establish the University of Ife, Ile-Ife, now renamed after that most visionary of leaders, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The Ife University became a model in the continent,?producing some of the finest minds in all areas of human endeavour. These men and women are all over the world today contributing their quota to human development.
The sad part is that many of the products of the finest decades of Ife?- say up until the mid-1980s -?who were expected to become an essential part of a new middle class in Western Nigeria and the rest of the country and the engine room of social, political and economic progress, have since been forced out of the country. Today, many of these people who were trained in not only Ife, but also in Ibadan, Nsukka, Zaria, Jos, and Lagos, and other universities,are now not able to send their own children to these same institutions that produced?them. They now send their kids to Ghana, South Africa, Europe or America.
What went wrong?
There is no doubt that the original crisis of higher education in Nigeria is entangled with the political crisis in Nigeria which brought the military to power. The military in power constituted the greatest threat not just to the advancement of human freedom and justice, but?alsoto knowledge building, knowledge sharing and human capacity development. The military destroyed higher education in Nigeria, as they destroyed many other institutions of society. Starting from 1966 when they first seized power and ending with the Generals Babangida-Abacha era where the?military simply buried an already ailing university system, Nigeria has witnessed leaders who are the very anti-thesis of human capital development.?With?higher education destroyed by the military, aided and abetted by their civilian cronies, it was no surprise that virtually every other institution of society, including the moral fabric of society, was virtually wiped out. A country in which we used to assume that some?things?could?not happen became, to paraphrase a retired Army Chief, a country of anything goes. By end of the disgraceful rule of those medieval generals, there was no longer any universe left in ouruniversities.
It took the rearguard action of civil uprising to chase the military out of power and mobilise the template for a new beginning under a democratic atmosphere. Thirteen years after, we still face many?of the old?challenges in the area of higher education in Nigeria ? as illustrated in the capital flight and brain drain which attend the outflow of students from Nigeria to foreign universities, without the expected inflow of trained manpower (brain gain) and financial resources. This is the depressing reality,?even though we all know that only substantial investment in human capital?which?is?subsequently?
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The Challenges of Higher Education in Nigeria
Nigeria has been described in?different?ways in the efforts to point to the paradox of the mixture of plenty and poverty. Some have called her a ?sleeping giant?, others a ?deformed giant? and one?of?her most accomplished political scientist, Professor Eghosa Osaghae,?called Nigeria a ?crippled giant?. Between the leadership crisis and the crisis of higher education, we can account for a significant part of the fundamental problems which have transformed Nigeria from Africa?s best hope at independence in 1960 to a sleeping, deformed or crippled giant.
By 1980, Nigeria had established one of the best higher education systems in the developing world which offered instruction at an international standard in diverse disciplines.For instance, the University of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello University earned global recognition for research in tropical health and agriculture, respectively. But since then, under successive military administrations, ?this sparkling reputation steadily [was] tarnished.?
A country of about 160 million people with abundant natural resources cannot but be a tragic story if ? as it is true of Nigeria ? the bigger its population gets the smaller the intellectual output of its population is. It is like a person who grows bigger in body, but whose brain shrinks in the process. I do not want?to?sound like an alarmist, but the truth is that the substantial increase in the number of our universities has not witnessed a greater increase in intellectual production ? or even the concomitant economic productivity.?This is as true in academic work as it is true in the consequences of research. For instance, the establishment of more Universities of Agriculture has not produced less hunger. Agriculture and hunger are antonyms. They have become synonyms under Nigeria?s incompetent leadership.
The more universities Nigeria establishes, the lower her ranking on the global scale of high-quality higher education. Let me give a concrete example in the area of research. In 1995, Nigeria?s number of scientific publications was 711. Fourteen years earlier, that is, in 1981 when the Nigerian university system was reaching its highest peak, the output of scientific publications was 1, 062. At the time Nigeria could boast of only 711, South Africa had?3, 413, Brazil had 5, 440, while India had 14, 883.?These three are countries whose scale we ought to share.
But these statistics should not be a surprise because, unlike these countries, and the ?Asian Tigers?, which shared the same level of economic development with Nigeria in the 1960s, our leaders, particularly the military rulers, refused to make strategic investments in human resources, and, in some cases, even drove much of the little we had out of our shores. This is why we are left with comparing ourselves with Ghana and even running to a country with absolutely no comparable resources in human and material terms to help 75, 000 of our young people to get good education. In a comparison of Ghana with one of?the ?Asian Tigers?, South Korea,?we can see how far we have lagged behind. Between 1960 and 2000, a period of 40 years, Korea?s enrolment ratio in tertiary education skyrocketed from 5?percent?to 80 percent. In the same period, Ghana?s enrolment ratio stagnated at less than 2 percent.?Also, while private tertiary institutions have proliferated in Korea enrolling about 85 percent of the total student population by 2000, Ghana?s private universities accounted for less than 2 percent of the total enrolment in the same period. Although these figures have improved a little in Ghana, the country is still far away from attaining the status of Korea. Furthermore, while the South Korean leaders have actively promoted university-industry partnership since the late 1980s, such linkages are uncommon in Ghana.?Yet,?this is?the?country?which?has become a model for Nigeria.
I am not attempting to diminish Ghana in any way. In fact, I admire their national spirit and their?collective resolve to leave their past behind and build a much better society, one?that is becoming a model for their much more endowed neighbour. I am only using the Ghana comparison to draw example to how low we have sunk as a country, such that we are now trapped in the Lowest Common Factor (LCF) complex, rather than one of the Highest Common Factor (HCF),?also called the Greatest Common Measure (GCM).
Yet, we must praise our Ghanaian friends for having at least?started?a national effort at returning to the glory of the past, if not marching on to a more glorious future. They have embraced the challenges. But it seems that in Nigeria, our national leaders are yet to identify a problem, let alone think?about?the?solutions. The recent ill-advised, in fact absurd, decision to create nine new federal universities is a grave example of the absence of strategic thinking at the national level. A federal government that is yet to develop the understanding of the need, let alone the capacity,?to sufficiently fund the existing federal universities should not have embarked on another round of creating?new universities.?They could have used the resources to expand the facilities and recruit more lecturers and staff in the existing universities so that they could accommodate more students.
Here again, we can see why Ghana cannot but be a positive reference point for Nigeria. In the 2012 federal budget, Nigeria voted less than 9 percent of the total national expenditure for education. This is far less than UNESCO?s stipulated target of 26 percent. Ghana, on its part, has never gone below the UNESCO target in the last 10 years. The country had devoted between 26 and 35 percent of its annual budget to education. South Africa?hovers around 26 percent, while Kenya has ensured?that?no less than 24 percent?is devoted to education. Nigeria is richer than the three countries and the population?of?all three?countries?combined is still less than Nigeria?s population. In other words, as articulated by a Nigerian professor, what this suggests is that ?Nigerian leaders for whatever reason have consistently underfunded the educational sector even at the level of budget proclamations which, as everybody knows, does not tell the full story about actual expenditure. Is it any wonder then that Ghana?s better funded educational sector has become a haven for Nigerian students seeking a modicum of quality and order??
In its response to the need for higher education to contribute to the growth and development in Africa, UNESCO understands the urgency of the situation by stating that, ?at no time in history has it been more important to invest in higher education as a major force in building an inclusive and diverse knowledge society and to advance research, innovation and creativity.? Also, the Norwegian Programme for Capacity Building in Higher Education and Research for Development (NORHED),?in explaining its rationale for investing in higher education in low and medium-income countries of the world, states that,??Strong academic sector is a prerequisite for any country to be able to develop its own intellectual resources, produce a competent workforce and visionary leaders, and foster innovation and knowledge needed to inform policies, address challenges and enhance growth.??Mr. Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations also agrees in general with this by arguing that:
The university must become a primary tool for Africa?s development in the new century. ?Universities can help develop African expertise; they can enhance the analysis of African problems; strengthen domestic institutions; serve as a model environment for the practice of good governance, conflict resolution and respect for human rights, and enable African academics to play an active part in the global community of scholars.
Why are Nigerian universities unable to play these roles as articulated by UNESCO, NORHED and Kofi Annan?
I have stated that military regimes were primarily responsible for first weakening, and then destabilizing and eventually destroying the university system in Nigeria. The civilian federal government since 1999 only came to bury the Nigerian University system. The fundamental challenge that we face therefore is how to resurrect the Nigerian university system from the dead. I will turn to this shortly.
Between 1980 and 1992, additional 11 universities were established in Nigeria, largely without much planning. Beyond 1992, and before and after private universities came on stream, the number of universities grew still. Yet, the real value of government?s allocation to higher education declined by 27 percent, even though enrolment in higher education grew by 79 percent. Government in this period?also?started to interfere more directly in university affairs. They not only influenced decisions in the university system, they also appointed vice chancellorsarbitrarily. Two examples of the height of this were the absurdity of one of the key military rulers accusing a campus newspaper in the then University of Ife of ?subversive activities,? while the other is the phenomenon of military sole administrators for a couple of universities under General Sani Abacha.
In the environment of massive corruption, mismanagement of the economy, and economic adjustment imposed by the Breton?Woods institutions ? the IMF and the World Bank -Nigerian universities began to lose their pride of place in global reckoning from the mid-1980s.The?Structural?Adjus
Since this period, higher education system in Nigeria has faced many challenges. These include diminishing financial resources; problems of access and equity; lack of vision and integration of higher education into national planning by political leaders; limitations on university autonomy and academic freedom; problems of effectiveness and efficiency; brain drain; lack of, or limited access to, new technologies in every area, particularly in science and technology; little emphasis on, limited facilities for, and limited number of teachers in the area of, science and technology; lack of innovation in teaching and research; incessant industrial action by university unions; the dominance of clientelist and patrimonial networks among university administrators, academic and non-academic staff, which has led to Vice Chancellors acting like traditional rulers;?centralisation of university administration; implosion in the population of students which is not matched by greater spaces and opportunities within existing schools; absence of a standardised system that rewards hard-work and productivity and, at the same time, discourages indolence in a consistent way; the preponderance on non-PhD holders as instructors in the universities; high fees among private universities thereby shutting out indigent students; non-availability of scholarships, student loans and grants, etc., etc.
Evidently, the crisis of leadership under the military,?which severely affected higher education, was also aggravated by the IMF and the World Bank which came in supposedly to help Nigeria recover during the economic collapse which followed the end of democratic rule in 1983. The Breton Woods Institutions and their international development partners, as they have since admitted, encouraged African governments, in general, and the Nigerian military regimes, in particular, to neglect higher education.?The World Bank, for many years,?was?particularly adamant in its belief that primary and secondary schooling?were more important than tertiary education for poverty reduction.?And given the influence that the Bank exercised over the Nigerian government from the second half of the 1980s up to the late 1990s, this led to serious haemorrhaging?of resources for?higher education.
Thankfully, the Bank has since recognised its fatal error. It is now convinced that higher education?institutions ?have a critical role in supporting knowledge-driven economic growth strategies and the construction of democratic, socially cohesive societies,? assisting ?the improvement of the institutional regime through the training of competent and responsible professionals needed for sound macroeconomic and public sector management,??and?providing ?crucial support for the national innovation system.??Higher education?also ?constitute the backbone of a country?s information infrastructure, in their role as repositories and conduits of information (through libraries and the like), computer network hosts, and Internet service providers.? Also crucially, the Bank recognises?that ?the norms, values, attitudes, and ethics that tertiary institutions impart to students are the foundation of the social capital necessary for constructing healthy civil societies and cohesive cultures?the very bedrock of good governance and democratic political systems.?
Higher education institutions?have three broad activities?in constructing democratic, knowledge-driven societies?which?any good leadership must not only?recognise, but must also facilitate.?These include:
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Supporting innovation by generating new knowledge, accessing global stores of knowledge, and adapting knowledge to local use;
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Contributing to human capital formation by training a qualified and adaptable labour force, including high-level scientists, professionals, technicians, basic and secondary education teachers, and future government, civil service, and business leaders
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Providing the foundation for democracy, nation building, and social cohesion.
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Our leaders must recognise, and show that they recognise, that ?social and economic progress is achieved principally through the advancement and application of knowledge and that higher education? and that higher education is ?necessary for the effective creation, dissemination, and application of knowledge and for building technical and professional capacity.? As a developing country, Nigeria, like other developing countries, is at the risk of further marginalisation in a highly competitive world economy because we no longer have a higher education system that is able to create and use knowledge in the age of amazing technologies.
Leadership is central. The state has a responsibility ?to put in place an enabling framework that encourages tertiary education institutions to be more innovative and more responsive to the needs of a globally competitive knowledge economy and to the changing labour market requirements for advanced human capital.??Since the World Bank came on board on the issue of the crucial role of higher education in ensuring economic development, it has come up with important suggestions on how to implement reforms in higher education in developing countries to be able to ensure positive development.
First, we need to strengthen?science and technology research and development?capacity in ways that are linked to our national priorities for?development.?For instance, I have given the examples of how Ibadan and Zaria led in the area of tropical medicine and agriculture respectively, in the past. Second, we need to improve?the relevance and quality of highereducation.?As any employer of labour knows in Nigeria, the quality of our new graduates, on a general basis, has become too low in the last two decades. Ask any major employer of labour today and they will tell you how much they spend in re-training new graduates. This is not merely a problem of the quality of instruction they got while in school ? even though that is part of it ? it is, more important, a function of all the challenges of higher education that I elaborated earlier.
Third, we need to promote greater equity mechanisms, including scholarships and student loans, which will?create and expand access and opportunities for disadvantaged students.?Fourth, we need to also encourage internal positive leadership within the higher institutions by ?strengthening management capacities, through such measures as introduction of management information systems, to promote improved accountability, administration, and governance and more efficient?utilization of existing resources.??Fifth, there is no way around enhancing and expanding information technology and communications capacity?in the digital age. Every university campus in Nigeria must not only be fully connected to the Internet, every member of the university community must have unrestrained access to the Internet, including wireless connectivity. Related to that, there should be a special provision, perhaps through the Education Trust Fund (ETF), for all the government-owned higher institutions to acquire the latest technology for teaching and research. The private universities must also do the same.
In?today?s knowledge-based economy, human capital is the most important resource.Human capital contributes to?higher?income, life satisfaction and social?cohesion?within individual economies.?It is a determinant of economic growth for nations.?Higher education is the most important instrument of building and expanding human capital in today?s knowledge economy. Also, quality higher education ?can ?help economies keep up or catch up with more technologically advanced societies. ?Higher education graduates are likely to be more aware of and better able to use new technologies. ?They are also more likely to develop new tools and skills themselves. ?Their knowledge can also improve?the skills and understanding of non-graduate co-workers, while the greater confidence and know-how inculcated by advanced schooling may generate entrepreneurship, with positive effects on job creation.?
We need to remind our leaders that that there are several other economic, social and political benefits that are derived from investing in higher education:
By producing well-trained teachers,?[higher education]?can enhance the quality of primary and secondary education systems and give secondary graduates greater opportunities for economic advancement. ?By training physicians and other health workers, it can improve a society?s health, raising productivity at work. ?And by nurturing governance and leadership skills, it can provide countries with the talented individuals needed to establish a policy environment favourable to growth.?Setting up robust and fair legal and political institutions and making them a part of a country?s fabric, and developing a culture of job and business creation, for example, call for advanced knowledge and decision-making skills. ?Addressing environmental problems and improving security against internal and external threats also place a premium on the skills that advanced education is best placed to deliver.
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Conclusion
Let me conclude by emphasising that I recognise the grave challenges faced by the academics, administrative staff and students in Nigerian universities today. I also praise the efforts of lecturers and staff who, despite all odds, continue to work hard to ensure that we are able to produce a new generation of the work force that may be able to propel Nigeria to greater heights. In spite of the absence of a deep commitment to a 21st?century system of higher education by the governments, both federal and state, many of you are toiling to do your best in the worst of conditions. This is why I have concentrated this lecture on what have not been done and should be done by the leaders, and the results that have been obtained from what they have failed to do and the heights that we can attain as a people if they do what needs to be done.
We need a leadership that is committed to a strategic vision; a vision that is capable of leading to the building of new skills in the 21st?century for economic growth and competitiveness; a leadership that mobilises and dispenses resources for training a skilled labour force; a leadership that focuses resources on developing research and teaching in the areas of science and technology, particularly in agriculture, given our national circumstances; and a leadership, both within and outside the university system, that is able to ensure collaboration, in fact, synergy, between research universities and the productive sectors of the economy.
Such a leadership must first recognise that human capital development is at the centre of modern civilisation. It is the engine room of economic development, social progress and democratic stability. Outside the Euro-American world, China?s rise and India?s leap unto the world economic stage were both facilitated by an almost unprecedented investment in human capital development through the funding of high-quality higher education. Nigeria can do the same. Higher education is the?surest way to ensure economic growth and the overall development of?a modern Nigeria.?We need a leadership that has the?capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose and?one that has?the character which inspires confidence .
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