- We’ve increased number of Phd holders – TETFund
- ‘Nigerian academics’ research proposal too poor to attract foreign grants’
- Poor facilities at local varsities discourage lecturers trained abroad from returning home – ASUU
By Juliana Uche-Okobi
When the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, Prof. Suleiman Elias Bogoro, led a delegation of the Strategic Adhoc Committee on Deepening Research and Development Mandate of the Fund to the National Science Foundation in the United States of America recently, it was for specific reasons.
First, the delegation made the visit to understudy NSF’s touted effective practices in supporting science and engineering research as well as education and innovation in institutions of higher learning in the USA. Secondly, Bogoro explained that the visit was to explore opportunities for international engagement towards possible exploration of a partnership between TETFund and the NFS.
As he further stated, the third reason for the US visit was to avail TETFund the opportunity to compare notes with NSF as a way of ensuring that interventions and processes involved in its funding of projects in Nigerian tertiary institutions were in line with the best practices obtainable in developed economies.
Appreciating Bogoro’s visit, Jessica Robin, Cluster Lead, Countries and Regions Cluster, who represented Hon France A. Cordova, NSF director, expressed the agency’s readiness to partner with TETFund in line with its strategic plans of building enduring relationships with African countries. She, however, added that since the NSF gives grant to only US-based scholars and institutions, any relationship the agency would build would be in conjunction with a US-based organ that could benefit from their support.
Meanwhile, the TETFund delegation did not end their tour of the US at the NSF. With a determination to intensify research work in Nigerian universities, an aspect of the academic pursuit that has suffered setbacks owing to paucity of funds, Bogoro and his team also visited the Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio, USA. The team won the admiration of the institution’s President, Prof. Cynthia Hammond Jackson, who expressed interest in TETFund’s research initiative. At the centre of discussion by the two teams was the sustainability model used by the university, which enabled it to attract research funding, as well as the implementation processes used to ensure that the desired research results, capable of solving life problems, were achieved.
Nigerian tertiary education is bedeviled by many challenges. One of such challenges believed to have also resulted in the lower standard of education is poor research, occasioned by inadequate funding. The resultant effect of this is the exodus of lecturers from Nigeria to foreign institutions that can fund their researches.
But it seems that the TETFund boss is bent on ensuring that research takes its rightful place in Nigeria’s citadels of learning. Bogoro is not just concerned about researches carried out by individuals to secure promotions, he is particularly concerned about researches targeted at solving human problems in the society. Whereas the common belief is that there is not enough fund to sponsor research works, the TETFund boss said the problem was that some professors lacked what it took to write research proposals capable of winning foreign grants. That was the submission of Bogoro at a session with directors of research of Nigerian universities in Abuja in May.
Speaking at the event organised by the National Universities Commission with the theme, “Bolstering Research Impact and Relevance through Systematic Research Governance in Nigeria,” Mr. Bogoro said that some of the research proposals that TETFund received “make one to wonder if some of these professors in question are actually the principal investigators in the proposal.”
The TETFund executive secretary, who said that about 80 per cent of such proposals were ‘condemned’ because of their poor quality, regretted that some professors were more interested in getting the PhD and not in acquiring the right knowledge.
“I have been on some platforms overseas where some Nigerian professors have been invited and they were reluctant to climb the podium because they wanted to get PhD at that stage. It is the title that bothers them not the knowledge.
“Now they have wangled their way to the top as professors, but give them the topmost platform in the world, they won’t want to climb because they will misrepresent the title they are carrying. This is a challenge to us,” he lamented.
Such an embarrassing situation may soon be consigned to the bin of history, if things work out as planned. According to Bogoro, TETfund has made N10 million available for all beneficiary institutions for capacity building and training for research proposal writing. The money, he insisted, should be “given to vice chancellors and provosts to create a week-long training to improve the capacities of our researchers in proposal writing so that we can win grants.” This training is key, for in his own judgement, Nigerian universities have dwelled too long on teaching rather than research.
Abubakar Rasheed, executive secretary of the NUC, who also spoke at the interactive programme on the need to “revive the culture of rigorous and relevant research,” said, “Nigerian institutions must, therefore, take the necessary steps to put research on the front burner of their activities so they can take their rightful place as leaders in the knowledge generation industries with impactful research findings.”
Teachers’ training is part of TETFund’s assigned obligation. The TETFund Act 2011 establishing the agency in Nigeria saddled it with a mandate to restore, rehabilitate and consolidate tertiary education in Nigeria from a two percent annual education tax on the assessable profits of all registered companies in Nigeria.
In the meantime, TETFund is working in the areas of provision of physical infrastructure for teaching and learning, instructional material and equipment, research, as well as publication and academic staff training and development. At present, Bogoro has listed the beneficiaries of the Fund to include 81 Universities, 64 Polytechnics and 70 Colleges of Education, totalling 215 institutions.
TETFUND’S FOREIGN TRAINING FOR LECTURERS NOT ACHIEVING DESIRED RESULTS- ACADEMICS
But despite the efforts, some academics are of the opinion that the Fund is essentially enriching universities abroad instead of investing in higher education in Nigeria. This argument particularly concerns the training of teachers in foreign universities. One of those who hold this view is Prof. Celestine Aguoru, a lecturer and research scientist at the Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State. He reportedly said, “If we dedicated the amount of money committed to foreign training for academic and non-academic staff of universities every year to one university each year, we would have state-of-the-art research facilities in Nigerian universities that foreign researchers would visit. But TETFund prefers to send the money to foreign universities for training rather than spend it in Nigeria.”
There is also another angle to it. Professor Akinbowole James of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, noted that though the fund had built structures at universities across the country, there were no corresponding facilities to aid teaching or learning.
“The fund is busy providing gigantic buildings with no equipment inside, forgetting that quality research is not about buildings but about equipment and expertise. TETFund must commit itself to the latter if it is to improve the ranking of Nigerian universities,” he said.
POOR FACILITIES IN NATION’S VARSITIES ENCOURAGING BRAIN DRAIN- ASUU
Lack of facilities is indeed a huge challenge. The current President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi of the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, told our correspondent that, because of poor facilities, some of those who received training abroad through TETFund had to return to foreign schools because they could not cope.
Ogunyemi said, “Many of our colleagues trained overseas have returned to the system in line with the goal of the training programme. However, some who came back had to leave because they could not readily apply the skills and knowledge gained overseas in local universities for lack of requisite facilities and equipment. Knowing the prevailing situation back at home, some others did not bother to return at all.
“The challenge this throws at us is the need to fix our universities in order to have maximum value for the scarce resources invested on these scholars. ASUU and TETFund have also discussed the option of split-sites training in which part of the fund that could have been wholly spent abroad are invested in Nigerian universities that would collaboratively train the trainees with overseas institutions.”
WE’VE RAISED POPULATION OF LECTURERS WITH PHD- TETFUND BOSS
Meanwhile, Bogoro believes that the agency is doing well in its areas of interventions. In the discharge of its mandate, he said TETFund had cued into the National Policy on Education at any given time.
While presenting a paper entitled, “TETFund and the Development of Tertiary Education in Nigeria: Strategies, Performance and Challenges,” at the Institute for Security Studies, Bwari, Abuja, in May, the TETFund boss listed some of the agency’s achievements. In the area of staff training and development, he said the agency had raised the bar following interventions.
“Prior to the introduction of this intervention only 40% of academic staff in Nigeria’s Tertiary Institutions had Ph.D, which is the minimum requirement to be a lecturer in a tertiary institution. But today, this percentage has risen to nearly 70% due to this intervention. A total of 24,385 Academic Staff have been trained under this scheme as at March, 2019,” he
said.
It is not in doubt that TETFund has made some strides in certain areas. The bone of contention is that interventions should improve every facet of local tertiary institutions as it should.
As lawyer and human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, said last year while addressing delegates at the ASUU conference, “Only a fraction of the huge funds amassed under the act (TETFund) has been disbursed.”
It is expected, therefore, that the fund, which the lawyer said was a product of “many struggles by the union to address the problem of perennial underfunding in Nigerian universities,” should be used to provide the needed facilities in Nigerian higher institutions.
