Fallouts from university town hall meetings

Recently, the Federal Ministry of Education, in conjunction with the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, organised zonal town hall meetings for universities in the six geo-political zones. The minister and senior officials of the ministry and parastatals were in attendance, alongside relevant stakeholders, including the vice chancellors and senior management staff of the universities located in the zones. SIMEONE NWAKUDU highlights major fall-outs from the meetings

Few weeks after he presented the 2013 Federal Ministry of Education annual report on key achievements in the basic education and tertiary education sub-sectors, the Supervising Minister of Education, Barr. Ezenwo Nyesom Wike initiated the stakeholder’s town hall meetings on federal government capital vote’s interventions and TETFUND allocations in federal tertiary institutions from 2010 to date.

These town hall meetings served as accountability fora for all the institutions with parents, students, civil society groups, TETFUND, the National Universities Commission and the Federal Ministry of Education, to interact on key developments and challenges in the institutions of higher learning. It is the first of its kind.

The  meetings held in the universities located in the six regional zone including; the University of Agriculture, Makurdi for the North Central, University of Port Harcourt for the South-South, University of Nigeria, Enugu campus for the South East and University of Ibadan for the South West ,amongst others, threw up the fact that the Federal Government under President Jonathan since 2010 has diligently improved funding and development of infrastructure and academic programmes conscientiously.
Vice Chancellor of the new Federal University in Ebonyi state, Prof. Oyewusi Ibidapo Obe, for instance, used the Enugu town hall meeting, to recall that whilst he served as a vice chancellor at the University of Lagos, he received no capital allocations for projects. He argued that under the present dispensation, both capital votes and TETFUND allocations are availed the universities for developmental projects.

All the Federal Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education that participated in the meetings made power-point presentations on projects executed by them. The presentations were laced with pictorial views of completed and on-going projects, backed by actual TETFUND allocations and capital votes. The administrators also highlighted their un-accessed TETFUND allocations.
In all the meetings, Supervising Minister of Education, Barr. Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, advised institutions to build the required capacity to fully access their TETFUND allocations. He said that the President’s Transformation Agenda has deliberately focused on human capital development as a basis for national development.

The minister further noted that the meetings provide the opportunity to show further proof that at no time in the history of the nation has a Federal administration invested in education as the current administration of President Jonathan.
He said; “It is for this reason that since the inception of the administration, there have been sustained increases in allocations to the education sector. The need to develop our citizens as assets for the country is comprehensively being addressed.
“Budgetary allocations to the Federal Ministry of Education have increased from N234.8billion in 2010 to N437billlion in 2013. This is apart from interventions through agencies as the Universal Basic Education Commission, TETFUND and other government agencies”.

The minister said that government recognizes the importance of tertiary education in driving development objectives and enhancing global competitiveness, hence the critical attention to the sub-sector. He said in 2013 alone, budgetary allocations to tertiary institutions stood at N336billion, with TETFUND increasing its funding of tertiary institutions.
According to the minister: “As institutions were highlighting some of their work through TETFUND, it is necessary that Nigerians appreciate the changing face of education in Nigeria through the work of the Goodluck Jonathan administration’’.

“We must note that in a lot of instances, the challenge is not the availability of funds, but in the efficient and the timely use of funds. As we speak, there are billions of naira outstanding in the matching grants to states because they have not provided their counterpart funds. In the same vein, many of our tertiary institutions have not fully accessed their TETFUND grants because of challenges of capacity in project implementation”.

Deputy Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Akinbode Agbaoye, said that the town hall meetings will generate better ideas for the development of tertiary institutions in the country.
Chairman, TETFUND Board of Trustees, Dr Musa Babayo, said that President Jonathan’s commitment to tertiary education has reverberated across institutions in the country.

Acting Executive Secretary of TETFUND, Aliyu Na’iya, assured Nigerians that his agency will continue to provide an enabling environment for infrastructural development in tertiary institutions in the country.
The town hall meetings were held in an open and transparent manner as the academic staff, the non staff, students and other stakeholders directly engaged the Federal Government and school administrators, in a passionate interaction on the goings on in the university system. Challenges were identified and possible solutions preferred. There were disagreements on procedures, which eventually led to the reaching of common grounds for implementation of projects in the institutions of higher learning.

Like the Supervising Minister of Education, Barr. Wike, said at one of the town hall meetings, a country whose universities won ten out of 18 African Centres of Excellence being sponsored by the World Bank to the tune of $80millionUSD cannot be wished away by false propaganda. He said those who directly benefit daily from the improvements in the tertiary institutions should appreciate the efforts of the present administration.

Nwakaudu is the Special Assistant (Media) to the Supervising Minister of Education