Jamb registrar asks federal government to halt the registration of new private universities

NIGERIA'S Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (Jamb) has asked the federal government to place an embargo on the establishment of new universities as the whole process has now become an ego trip for the rich with no regard to quality.

At the moment, Nigeria has 170 universities, with 43 owned by the federal government, 48 by state governments and being 79 privately owned. However, the Nigeria Universities Commission (NUC) has a huge backlog of pending requests as several hundred applications are waiting to be processed, with higher education seen as a worthwhile investment following the huge demand across Nigeria.

However, Jamb's registrar Professor Ishaq Oloyede, said there should be a halt on the registering of new universities and efforts should rather be geared towards developing existing ones. Speaking during the fourth convocation lecture of the Federal University, Dutse, in Jigawa state, he added that investors are opening universities with no regard to the quality of education being offered.

Professor Oloyede said: “A situation where universities are only established to massage the ego of rich individuals and politicians is not healthy for the educational development of the country as tertiary education is too crucial to be reduced to a commercial outfit for an ego-tripping venture. Since education is everybody’s business, all Nigerians should support the effort towards educational development.”

Meanwhile, the federal government has been given a seven day ultimatum to abrogate admission acceptance fees into all tertiary institutions in the country to encourage learning. Human rights group, One Love Foundation said it decided to give the one week notice because these fees discouraged learning, adding that if action is not taken, it will be forced to seek legal redress.

According to the group's coordinator Patrick Osagie Eholor, they have been overwhelmed with the outcries of the poor masses whose academic pursuits have been truncated due to their inability to pay the acceptance fees. He added that they are having to make the payment before they could be admitted into the universities under the guise of professional admission.

Mr Elohor said: “Our attention has been drawn to overwhelming protests and outcry from students, parents and the general public of Edo State and Nigeria in general in respect of oppressive and unbearable admission acceptance fees which newly admitted students are compelled to pay by the government in our various institutions. Investigations by our foundation indicates that these fees range between N40,000 to as much as N60,000 in some state per student.

“These fees pose additional hardship and obstacles to tertiary education aspiration of our well-meaning youths and parents whose enthusiastic votes brought the present administration to power. Subsequently, under the this administration, only a very slim minority of Nigeria's citizens who are either successful industrialists or privileged commissioners, government appointees, anointed contractors, treasury looters, fraudsters and politicians with deep pockets have the right to give higher education to their children."