By Martin Paul
Abuja
Chairperson, Senate Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFund, Senator Binta Garba, has bemoaned that Nigerian parents spent as much as $2 billion to train their children in foreign universities.
She disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at the commissioning of Federal University, Lafia, to the Nigerian Research Education Network (NgREN), saying her discovery was through a dialogue she had with the CBN
governor.
Binta lamented that if such amount was injected into the development of education in the country, there would have been no need for parents to send their wards to foreign institutions.
“The truth is that these children would come back to Nigeria in search of jobs and leadership roles; so why waste the money outside, we should start creating our own leaders here in the country,” she said.
She disclosed that during the budget defence of the National Universities Commission at the Senate, many were wondering what NgREN stood for, but her experience of how connectivity with various institutions through the project, has projected Nigerian universities
in the world.
“With what I have seen is very convincing, I will take some words back to my people because it is like we are there and very soon, we are going to be properly there.”
Earlier, NUC executive secretary, Prof. Julius Okojie, had explained how the NgREN “operates and the connectivity with other intuitions, where lectures can be shared.”
He said Federal University, Lafia, was the latest to be connected, recalling that the project started as video conferencing, but now expanded to 10 Centres of Excellence (ACE).
He recalled how a Nigerian university researched and overcame the Ebola virus, advising, however, that the next generation of students would be borderless in university education.