Between the cause and effect of university crisis in Nigeria

In the past couple of days, there have been several back-and-forth arguments about the university crisis in Nigeria.

Nigerian academics at home and the diaspora have been making their points as to where the blames should lie. One of the claims made by some Nigerians at home was that academics in Nigeria are free of blame from the university crisis; and that all culpability should go to the government. There were other sundry issues that have been raised around the general conditions of Nigerian universities. A contributor to the debate noted that it is intellectually futile for the discussion to be limited to highlighting causes rather than effects. The writer, it seems, also absolves academics at home of a certain charge of being ill-equipped. It is important for me to state that I am not fond of the word “ill-equipped”, neither do I seek to justify who is ill-equipped or not, in the strict sense of the word. However, if the word were deployed for exculpatory reasons, which I believe it was, I would like to note that I do not believe that professors in Nigeria—being leading stakeholders within the academic system—are free of blame in the overall working context of the universities.

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First, it makes no sense to attribute all the predicaments of the Nigerian university to the neglect by the government alone. As stakeholders in the university system, the academics who keep pushing for the same ‘cause’ by doing the same thing over and over again—in the form of embarking on nationwide strikes—yet expecting different results or ‘effects’ cannot be said to be well-equipped! Academics are supposed to be critical thinkers in their general approach to life, and their ‘equipment’ should include their being able to not insist on doing the same thing over and over again whereas expecting diverse outcomes. Granted, it is important to discuss how causes create effects, but it is also important to highlight that whenever an effect is brought to the fore before a cause, it simply means that a referral is being made to the extent that the solutions to those effects are actually embedded in the said cause. This is basic reasoning. Thus, if we say that doctoral students in Nigeria are largely unable to make good publications during their research, what is being said in other words is that the conditions—or if you like, the cause—for making those publications are not necessarily there.

Second, let us highlight some of the causes appropriately to which there was a charge of an unwillingness for a discussion. A contributor to the debate asserted that the strikes embarked upon by the academics are the only options before them. Academics and intellectuals are not known to run out of options quite easily. For instance, a writer asked that if university strikes end, how do we fund the universities? The answer is as the writer guessed: tuition fees! Nothing says that tuition fees cannot be used to run universities. It is done in many parts of the world and why not in Nigeria? The belief that tuition fees should not be used to run universities in Nigeria is at the core of the university crisis in Nigeria. If we understand the way universities are run in the United States and the United Kingdom where one of the contributors to the debate studied, we will agree that the institutions in those countries do not rely on a hundred per cent funding from the government. The universities in the countries that we all like to refer to for excellence are funded by endowments, taxation and tuition fees! Even in the European countries that offer tuition-free education, the taxes received from citizens form a substantial contribution to the realisation of some of the free services they enjoy, including tuition-free education. Government funding of universities is meant to be complementary, not an all-encompassing capital meant for the hundred per cent subsistence of universities. Thus, it is amazing how academics in Nigeria, including the contributor in question, would not want the government to raise university tuition fees—and taxes—significantly to decently cover the costs of running the universities. Perhaps, these should be the cause that certain academics should talk about, which they avoid because it is more convenient to shift all blames to the government.

Third, academics in Nigeria must understand the need to fight for university autonomy in its viable setting. If we make a case for autonomy, we should not shove off the legitimate case for increased tuition as a sustainable means for keeping our universities thriving. The greatest universities in the world where the top researchers inhabit do not work with the model that government must be the sole funder of universities. Nigeria cannot be an exception. That the children of ordinary Nigerians would not have the opportunity to attend universities unless the universities are run the way they are being run today is merely presumptuous. The children of ordinary Nigerians are attending private primary and secondary schools in the country. The children of ordinary Nigerians are also attending different levels of private universities in the country. And even in other countries where the source of university funding is drawn significantly from tuition fees, the children of ordinary people still have access to universities. Why can we not have that in Nigeria—because we are working with a belief that says it is not possible?

Fourth, it is commendable that some Nigerians, after training overseas return home to give back to the country. However, what the return-home-advocacy might not have factored in is that research areas and the challenges associated with it differ. What works for people in one discipline may not work for those in other disciplines. For example, you can have one or two scientific devices brought home from overseas either by purchase or donation to assist in research. But you cannot conduct research on other aspects of the sciences on that basis alone. The leading research areas in the world today are climate change, ocean acidification and marine ecosystems, urban development and mobility issues and cancer. If certain academics stay back in countries that facilitate research into the aforementioned areas—given that they know that their research areas cannot be explored effectively in Nigeria—and decide to state their frustrations with the Nigerian system, it is uncharitable for home-based academics to dismiss them as ingrates.

Fifth, it is true that the internet has created an opportunity for researchers around the world to verify each other’s contributions to the body of knowledge. However, the assertion that citations and h-indexes of scholars working on different fields can be compared with each other in an across-the-board style is misleading. True scholars should know that citations and h-indexes are field-weighted evaluations. For example, a scholar who investigates cancer in the areas of say digital image analysis, progesterone receptors, breast neoplasms, hormone receptors, adenoma, etc., should not be compared with another scholar who studies applied mathematics in the areas of say fractional differential equations, lie symmetry, solitary wave solutions, etc. To demand for citations and h-indexes as evaluations without considering the nature of different fields is to adopt an unscientific method of inquiry. How well a researcher is doing—if their citations and h-indexes are any indication—is to be evaluated against those of researchers in their own field. This is because there are fields that have more research going on, which implies more citations which equally implies more h-indexes.

Sixth and finally, it is important to state that throughout the course of the debate, I am not aware of anyone who has argued that every academic in Nigeria is irresponsible. Thus, I do not see the reason why people get overly worked up and emotional over the discussion that is about what is clearly the predominant academic culture in Nigeria. We can keep bringing up examples of academics who are exceptional in Nigeria, but that exercise should not preclude conversations on the broader issues. As the debates keep unfolding, there seems to be some kind of logical inconsistency, which some academics in Nigeria are espousing—that government should bear responsibility for the failed state of the country’s  universities when the same academics have wrestled almost absolute autonomy from the government save for the issue on funding.

Aminu is Assistant Professor of Petroleum Chemistry at the American University of Nigeria, Yola