We don’t have varsities — Don

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Akinyanju

A Professor in the Department of Microbiology, University of Ilorin, Poju Akinyanju, tells MOTUNRAYO JOEL, the challenges confronting science education in Nigeria

President Goodluck Jonathan has said Nigeria needs more universities. What is your stance on the issue of establishing more institutions?

The question is more basic than this. We should first of all ask ourselves if Nigeria has universities. What we call universities, to be frank, are not universities. There is very little research going on in our universities and there are not enough facilities in our institutions. It is easy to bring students together and graduate them after four years. But the students will leave with a wishy-washy training because the teaching facilities and research work are not there.

I am speaking largely for science-based disciplines. We need more facilities in our institutions. So, what we should be asking ourselves is if our universities should be called universities in the first place. We should think about this before going ahead to establish more universities.

In the area of science, is Nigeria closing the gap?

We are not even close to where the world is in science. In the last 15 years, I have taught in about three universities and on the average, we line up about 20 students to a microscope. There is very little that can be done with in such a situation. For example, microbiology in our institutions is at the molecular biology phase. I am not aware of any functional molecular biology laboratory in Nigeria and if there are, they must be every few, or largely dysfunctional. The truth is that you need to be on ground, doing your own part of the research in order to compete with the outside world. Facilities such as microscopes and spectro-photo meters are not available. These facilities are necessary.

The Federal Government often says it funds public tertiary institutions adequately. Do you agree with this?

It is a little bit of both, the universities and the federal government are at fault. I will explain why. For example, there is no sufficient money for universities to run a proper molecular biology laboratory. To run this type of laboratory, you will need about N20m. This is not a lot of money when one considers the amount of money people play around with in Nigeria. There is no university that can actually devote that amount of money to molecular biology and the FG is also not releasing that kind of money.

And it is also true that the money given to universities are not being properly utilised. Often, most universities focus on meeting up with the requirements of the National Universities Commission institutional accreditation. These also include having good buildings, good lawns and flowers. But very few Nigerian universities focus on putting money into laboratories to enhance teaching. There are universities who claim to be top of the range and still teach with chalkboards. Some of them do not even have Internet facilities. In them, students sit on top of each other because the lecture hall is choked.

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We don’t have varsities — Don

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