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Dr Kingsley Ugwuanyi, a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), has shared insights into how Nigerian universities can become self-sufficient in the face of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) impasse with the federal government.
Recall that the National Executive Council (NEC) of ASUU declared an indefinite strike which came into effect on Monday, August 29, after months of talks with the federal government failed to reach a compromise.
The union accused the federal government of “high-level deceit” since the renegotiation of the 2009 agreement opened in 2017 and ASUU insists it will not call off the strike action until the government takes concrete steps toward implementing its demands.
These demands include the payment of earned academic allowance, review of the National Universities Commission (NUC) 2004 Act to tackle the proliferation of universities, implementation of 26 per cent budgetary allocation to the education sector, implementation of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS), payment of withheld salaries and non-remittance of check-off dues of unions, salary upgrade and the constitution of visitation panels.
In an exclusive interview with TheNewsGuru.com (TNG), Dr Ugwuanyi, an expert in English sociolinguistics, who is also a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary, provides an in-depth perspective on what the real issues are and what he thinks might be the way forward.
On the way forward, Ugwuanyi averred that Nigerian universities must become more business-oriented to provide services to meet the demands of the area where they are located, and profit therefrom.
“A faculty of agriculture, for example, should be able to produce sufficient food to meet the demands of the area where it is located, and profit therefrom,” the senior lecturer said while stressing that “primarily, university education is funded by the government”.
Ugwuanyi said: “I have taught at two universities in the UK – the University of Northumbria and the University of Newcastle. I did my PhD in the UK as well and it was funded by Northumbria University. So how is university education funded in the UK, for example?
“Primarily, university education is funded by the government and I’m using the UK example because that’s the one I’m most familiar with. But there are other sources of funding like endowment funds from NGOs, private individuals, alumni, companies, or establishments that have relationships with these universities.
“Do we have all of these sources of funding in Nigeria? Just a few. In the University of Nigeria Nsukka, for example, there is an endowment fund by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) in the department of Geology. This is the example I can mention off the top of my head right now, but there are not as many of them in Nigeria as you find in the UK.
“Do alumni help in Nigeria? Maybe also to a very small extent, but the fact is that the bulk of university funding in the UK comes from the government. The government has annual grants and allocations to universities and most times these allocations are given according to the research output of these universities.
“There are also research councils for humanities, social sciences, engineering and medicine that individual lecturers or researchers attached to universities can apply to directly and have their research funded, following clearly stipulated, transparent and often merit-based procedures.
“For instance, in Nigeria, there is the TETFUND which should do that, but you know how Nigeria is. I remember applying to TETFUND in 2015 to attend a conference in Germany, I didn’t as much as get a reply, not even a response that my application was not successful.
“But I knew some other people who got the funding because they know someone in the university administration or someone that works in TETFUND”.
Read an excerpt of the interview here
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