Anger over lean budget for public universities

By Tunde Fatunde. Public universities in Nigeria will face harsh financial times yet again this year. The National Assembly recently approved a paltry 8.7% of the nation’s entire budget for the education sector, and only around 3% of this low allocation will go to tertiary institutions. Stakeholders, including lecturers, students and non-teaching staff at public universities, have expressed disappointment at poor funding of the sector by a political class that has clearly not come to terms with the urgent need to invest massively in education, as the driving force of the knowledge economy.
Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education has 22 specialised agencies and hundreds of civil servants in the ministry itself. It is in charge of 37 universities, 21 colleges of education, 48 mono- and polytechnics and 19 technical colleges. The budget also supports 104 unity secondary schools spread across the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. Read more...