Funding tertiary education in Nigeria

Kaine Agary

The Academic Staff Union of Universities has been on strike for
weeks now. It has been about three months and there seems no
definitive end in sight. It is a sad state of affairs for students
who have to sit at home waiting for the strike to be called off so
that they can return to school, finish their programmes and move on
to the next phase of their lives. On the other hand, I understand
completely where ASUU is coming from. It is difficult to give your
best when, as a lecturer, you neither have the infrastructure nor
the resources.

Growing up, education was very important in my family. My
grandmother used to say that if you stuck with education then you
did not have to depend on anyone for your breakfast, lunch or
dinner. For my grandfather, it was important to educate his
daughters as well as his sons because to him, an education was all
that he had to give them, and for his daughters, he wanted them
independent and education was the key. They were both ridiculed for
wasting their money on their daughters, but that was not of concern
to them.

My grandparents had six children, two sons and four daughters.
Luckily for them they had the options of mission schools, but it
was still a struggle that they willingly took on. This covered
primary and secondary education. Tertiary education was another
story. The first daughter attended Teacher Training College and
taught for some years so that she could contribute to the family
purse. A few years later, the second daughter responded to a
training advert in Lagos and became part of the first set of female
air traffic controllers in Nigeria. The first son was a gifted
organist and that gave him some sort of income as a student at the
University of Nigeria Nsukka. It worked out that there was a big
enough gap between the first three and the last three, so that my
grandparents had some reprieve. Those were different times – my mom
and her sister were able to get good-paying vacation jobs to
contribute to their upkeep. In the end, all is well that ends well.
They produced two doctorate holders (the last two daughters – my
mother and her younger sister).

I am a proud product of a Universal Primary Education Model
Primary School in Port Harcourt (UPE Borokiri). That is my
foundation. The UPE was a great idea but in its second coming
during the Obasanjo regime in the 1970s, it became fraught with
challenges that had not been considered in the planning stages.
Although enrolment of primary school students massively increased,
existing infrastructure was inadequate, the quality of teachers
began to drop, and of course, we cannot exclude the effects of
corruption and the military years.

For tertiary education, I went to the United States of America.
Tertiary education in America is expensive, but there are options.
The most affordable being the community colleges that offer
associate’s degrees (some offer bachelor’s degrees). For state
schools your fees are lower if you are a resident of the state. And
then there are the Ivy League, top tier schools where you pay an
arm and a leg. My education was funded through a merit scholarship,
a student loan, and work-study.

Aside: this just made me realise that in all the schools I
attended and had to work, the first-year students had to work in a
kitchen. As a Form 1 student at Federal Government Girls’ College,
Abuloma, we washed the plates after lunch and dinner. It was
disgusting, but I appreciate the opportunity for bonding and
teamwork. As a first-year student at Mount Holyoke College, my
work-study job was in the kitchen, again, washing dishes. The only
job that freshmen could have was in the kitchen, most likely doing
the dishes. There was a roster and we were responsible for getting
the dishes done after every meal time, and in time for the next
meal time. Luckily for me, the loan agreement for international
students at my school was that if you still had outstanding
payments and your loan would be cancelled if you returned to your
home country and stayed for at least four years.

Forgive the digression. The point that I am trying to make, and
I do not have a popular position on this, is that people must pay
more for tertiary education in Nigeria. I may be naïve in my
thinking but I believe that the introduction of the Bank
Verification Number, the National Identification Number and other
technological advances present an opportunity for financial
institutions to develop student loan products for students in
tertiary institutions.

At the University of Ghana, fees range between the equivalent of
N112, 500 and N187, 500, depending on the faculty. This is for
regular students. Regular students are those whose brains are so
hot that their tuition is subsidized by the government. Full
fee-paying students pay between N285, 000 and N487, 500. Foreign
students (including Nigerians) pay in US dollars, starting at about
$5,000.Government focuses its resources on primary and secondary
education and subsidizes tuition for tertiary education based on
merit. I cannot emphasise the importance of a strong foundation. It
is the funnel through which your lecturers have to pass. No matter
what level of education a person has attained, you can spot when
the foundation is weak.

In Nigeria, at two of the top universities in the country,
students do not pay more than N60, 000 and for some, that includes
accommodation. I am no expert in education policy, but I do not
believe that this is viable. The trend in many countries now is to
move away from free tertiary education, and provide bursaries based
on merit. Tuition fees have become a political issue particularly
in our state universities. In some states, tuition fees are as low
as N5, 000 and any attempt to increase the fees will be met by
stiff resistance from students. No government wants to raise fees,
yet they will not allocate adequate funding to education. Feeding
students is great but under what conditions are they learning? How
qualified are their teachers? What equipment do they have to teach
their subjects? Those in the sciences probably have more of a
challenge than others, but all have shared difficulty.

Government needs to do more, but students must also accept that
you get what you pay for.