Opinion
Tinubu’s Plan To Grant Universities Autonomy – A Ploy To Make Education For The Rich
On Monday, September 12, 2023, the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, told Nigerians that president Tinubu will grant autonomy to Nigerian universities. Like the removal of fuel subsidy, this is a polite way of telling Nigerians that the federal government will withdraw support to federal universities.
All over the world, the business of government is basically about providing happiness and basic amenities that make life worth living for its citizens.
Unfortunately, successive federal government administrations had ignored the directives of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), that 26 per cent of budgetary allocation be earmarked for education.
Nigeria has derailed from the colonial project that university education is, to now become instruments of status symbol. Education is gradually becoming a class-related, opportunity commodity that is the exclusive preserve of the rich.
The value of a university society as the citadel of liberal education is rooted in the supremacy of the triple elements of civilisation, reason and freedom. The human mind has to be free and cultivated for knowledge to take place – and this is what the university does.
With the removal of fuel subsidy on May 29, 2023, president Tinubu officially defended his decision to scrap the petrol subsidy and said, “In a little over two months, we have saved over a trillion naira that would have been squandered on the unproductive fuel subsidy which only benefited smugglers and fraudsters.”
A government that streamlines the guidelines of educational administration based on irrational policies, without addressing fundamental challenges, is courting social insecurity – the case of Boko Haram terrorists and bandits in the North are classic examples – an illiterate man is a very dangerous man.
It is sad and unfortunate that the present Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, who cannot boast to be a product of rich parents; who enjoyed access to university education, thanks to benevolent policies of past governments, is now the one that submitted the Memo to ‘drastically increase university fees’ to Tinubu’s Cabinet for adoption, cast’s him in the mould of ‘a man who uses a ladder to climb up but turns round to destroy it for others’ is quite sad.
I hereby call on president Tinubu to immediately throw away the memo to increase university fees out of the window into where it belongs, the waste bin.
Tinubu should evolve ways to deploy part of the savings made from the removal of fuel subsidy to fund university education.
As for those who will want to throw up figures from foreign universities to justify an increase in university fees, I want to remind them that the earning power and standard of living of Nigerians are world apart with that of citizens of foreign countries. Government should, and must continue to fund university education, not after the removal of fuel subsidy and the resultant impact on the standard of living and hyper inflation!
Finally, if university education, through an increase of fees becomes the exclusive preserve for the children of the rich, they should be prepared to go to sleep with one eye open. A child who says its parents should not sleep, shall not also expect to sleep. A word is enough for the wise.
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