Opinion
Who Wants More Varsities?
The National Universities Commission (NUC), last week, revealed its plan to license more private universities in the country. Speaking in Abuja while delivering a lead paper at the maiden edition of the National Summit on Private Universities, the Executive Secretary of NUC, Prof Abubakar Rasheed, said the commission is currently processing 303 new applications for private universities from different parts of the country.
Given the huge population of the country and the high demand for university education, one would have agreed with Rasheed that more universities are needed to cater for these people. But the questions are: what is the state of the previously licensed private universities in the country? How many of them can meet the standard of world class universities? How have these universities impacted on the students and university education generally? From 30 universities in 1996, we now have 170 universities, out of which 79 are private; can we say that the country is now better off educationally?
I mean, we all know what goes on in some of these private universities. Many of them are understaffed. Even the available staffs are not qualified. There are no quality infrastructure and facilities, no adequate funding and many other challenges. I once visited a teaching hospital of a private university owned by a faith based organization and was shocked to find out that the so called teaching hospital was a quasi clinic meant for patients who go to the church for healing. You could see the medical students mingling with the patients and other worshipers in a filthy environment, devoid of all the qualities needed in an academic atmosphere.
The issue of admission is another ball game. Merit is thrown overboard. In their desperation to have more students and make money, any candidate with whatever school certificate result is admitted. It is even said that in some of these private universities, there is nothing like carryover or repeating. They collect huge sums of money as fees and are compelled to push the students through, whether they merit it or not. So just like the public universities, one can buy his way into and through the universities. The problem of corruption and other anomalies in the public universities which many thought would be corrected by the private universities have engulfed them as well.
The most worrisome thing is that nobody seems to care about how these universities are run and what goes on there. Parents on the other hand keep pushing their children. They buy school certificates for them, buy university admission for them and are ready to bribe their children and wards’ way through the university all in a bid to get “best results”.
Is the job of NUC therefore only to issue licences to any group or individual whose pockets are heavy enough to establish a university? What about regulating the activities of these institutions and ensuring that universal best practices obtain there, which will translate to better products? What about setting limits to school fees and other fees charged by these citadels of learning so that parents and guardians, who in some cases contributed to the establishment of the schools are not reaped off?
In the aforementioned speech, the NUC Secretary disclosed that most of the private universities were still unable to fulfill their admission quotas as they admit barely six percent of the total university admission in the country per session. He stated the obvious, which is, that the high fees charged by these institutions is a major reason for lack of patronage of these universities. Knowing this, what has the commission done to address it? Besides, how logical is it to licences more universities when the existing ones are virtually empty?
One, therefore, thinks that NUC should exercise some constraints in the issuance of licenses for private universities else they will be balkanized just like private primary and secondary schools. Efforts should rather be made to raise the standard of the existing universities, both public and private. NUC, the Federal Ministry of Education and other relevant bodies should see to it that the universities we have in the country are institutions to reckon with. Is it not better to have a few world-class universities than to have hundreds of them that are worthless? They should look into the curricula of our universities so as to ensure that these institutions produce all-round qualified graduates, equipped with sufficient skills to fit into today’s technology driven world instead of the hollow graduates we have today. It is a known fact there in Nigeria today, employment opportunities are scarcely there. Thousands of graduates churned out of our universities yearly roam the streets daily searching for job. So a well designed curriculum that will equip the students to stand on their own upon graduation might be the best way out.
Most importantly, it is high time Nigeria de-emphasized paper qualification and university education for every Tom, Dick and Harry. Let us copy from other countries where a selected few go to the university while others go into other fields of life, in accordance with their talents and capabilities.
Calista Ezeaku
Opinion
Restoring Service Commission As Professional Gatekeeper
On the 13th of December 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu inaugurated the newly reconstituted Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC), and gave a marching order to the Commission to “competently facilitate the transformation, reorientation, and digitisation of the federal bureaucracy to enable, and not stifle, growth and enhanced private sector participation in the development of the Nigerian economy, in full adherence to the renewed hope agenda of his administration.” The FCSC has since interpreted this mandate as a charge to interrogate a fundamental question: What has the FCSC failed to do to institutionally gatekeep the federal civil service and safeguard its professional integrity, dynamics of efficiency and structural parameters despite many years of consistent and sustained administrative reforms in Nigeria?
To answer this question in a resolute way demands first the admission that given the institutional degeneration of the FCSC itself in the wake of the system-wide decline of the public administration system in Nigeria, it does not have the requisite structural and institutional parameters, to complement any forthright system-wide reform to reform the civil service reform and thereby participate in bringing to fruition the Renewed Hope Agenda of His E xcellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. This therefore, requires a concerted reflection outside the box in measure that will instigate the critical injection of fresh and innovative ideas, insights and models of performance that are potent sufficiently, to compel the repositioning of the federal civil service in terms of its operational capability readiness, redoubled managerial acumen and policy professional policy professionalism that could add up to become a game-changing event for the successful implementation of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Federal Government. This is the mandate of the renewed FCSC.
And in pursuing this fundamental mandate, we must never forget to situate the FCSC within the context of the ongoing service-wide reforms, especially the performance bond-enabled central policy and service delivery coordination framework of the Presidency and the Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation.
The FCSC reforming the reform mandate is essentially a complementary task whose significance adds to the overall health of the federal public service system in Nigeria.
And in complementing this ongoing reform, the FCSC is compelled to focus on the broader picture of reforming the reforms to encompass the rehabilitation of the public service in Nigeria.To clarify: this larger challenge faced by the FCSC involves answering the loaded question: Who is a Nigerian public servant? This of course looks like a very simple question. However, we begin to see how complex it is when we place it in the context of how majority of Nigerians see the public service and public servants—politicians, the police, immigration and customs, the fire system, national electricity, education boards, and many more.
How have a large majority of Nigerians encountered public servants in these ministries, departments and agencies? The answer is simple: Nigerians encounter bureaucratic inefficiency aggravated by bureaucratic corruption. And the Ease of Doing Business Index demonstrates this from year to year. It is difficult to clear your goods at any of Nigeria’s ports. It is a traumatic experience to get the police to be your friend. Nigerians pay for electricity they do not enjoy, and they are even bullied by overzealous officers in the process. Let us not even talk about the police and the politicians. Long story short: the perception of public servants by Nigerians is bad.
The public service has become bureaucratic because there are so many impediments and obstacles that have prevented the system from becoming creative and innovative in rethinking its own internal operations, processes and procedures that would have made for optimal functioning.
When any ordinary Nigerian visits the federal secretariat in any state of the federation, the lack of inter-sectoral collaboration, for example, or the near-absence of technology-enabled system’s capability ensures that such a Nigerian is frustrated in making simple administrative transactions. And that terrible perception reflects badly not only on the capability readiness of the FCSC to efficiently gatekeep the professionalism of the system, but also the systemic efficiency of the public service to backstop the government’s policies that lead to good governance. And so, attending to these institutional debilitations demands a focus onthree general and systemic components around which reform reflection and action must converge.
First, there is the urgent need to challenge and reengineer the traditional Weberian— “I-am-directed”—bureaucratic tradition which essentially rides on outdated administrative practices, analogue operating system, red-tape bureaucratic culture and poor stewardship with regards to the consideration given to, and the rights of the citizens as the customers who consume public services. In other words, the old Weberian system around which the Nigerian public service system still revolves crucially undermines bureaucratic efficiency. It will therefore be a wrong choice of operational mechanism to hinge the success of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Tinubu administration. Reforming the reform of the Nigerian public system therefore implies rethinking the basis of its institutional efficiency to get service delivery done effectively.
Second, reform must confront the low organisational intelligence quotient (IQ) of the public service workforce and especially its top echelons. This has not only impacted on the essence of public spiritedness and professionalism of the public servant, it has also triggered the breakdown of public service values that makes the public service all over the world a noble calling. The root cause of this decline in the vocational spirit of a public servant can only be redressed by a consistent, coherent and strict metrics of re-professionalisation.
Third, bureaucratic efficiency must be connected with the ultimate objective of achieving an effective and efficient democratic service delivery that defines what good governance is for Nigerians. And this demands that the public service must be compelled to become a performing and productive institution that holds its workforce to metrics of performance accountability. And a culture of structural performance can only take off when reforms reduce the series of systemic constraints that limit the effectiveness of the system to deliver public goods to Nigerians. We have a good example in how the President himself has got all the key governance players in the government to sign on to a performance bond with a dedicated policy coordination backend.
Fourth, a key component of performance management for productivity is a functional competency-based human resource management practices which, in the case of the Nigerian public service system, are already compromised. Two structural issues are responsible for this compromise. The first is the collapse of internal control mechanism, and the second is the rampant bureaucratic corruption aggravated by the lack of the culture of deferred gratification.
The consequence of all these institutional weaknesses is the bloated and inefficient status of the administrative system that allows it to keep generating redundancies and ad hoc structures and units of government agencies that compete with the existing bureaucratic structures in order to achieve what is often taken to be a flexible administrative arrangement unencumbered by administrative codes, rules and regulations. There is also the unfortunate replication of these parallel structures across each state of the federation. The result is the explosion of the cost of governance in ways that burden the capacity to allocate needed funds to critical governance projects speaks more to the infrastructural needs of the citizens than mere overheads.
Olaopa, an online contributor wrote in from Abuja.
By: Tunji Olaopa
Opinion
Leveraging On ICT For Timely Retirees’ Payment
The Computerised Public Service System which is an offshoot of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is a 21st Century wizard that most people are not compliant with. Sadly, even those in the sector or operators of the system are either underutilising or have refused to deploy its usefulness in transactions, public service system and in addressing the undue and unnecessary delay in the processing and consequent payment of retirees’ pension and gratuities.
The timely payment of pension is a function of early documentation and completion of processing of the retirees entitlements. This factor underlies the injunction on civil and public servants who are at the verge of leaving the service to at least six months to leaving the service, start the processes of retirement through notification, submission of relevant documents to appropriate departments to facilitate processing. However, technology has made such manual documentation and processing of benefits of a retiree, very unnecessary and odd in the 21st Century.
The harrowing and painful experiences of those leaving civil or public service in having their documents processed, accessing their pension and gratuity is better imagined than experienced.
But civil servants seem to have acclimatised with the anomaly of protracted waiting for their entitlements after retirement from service.
The unnecessary delay on the part of employers and fears of going through the challenges of retirement processes before retirees could get their pension and gratuity are some basic factors why some civil servants falsify age and service records.
This is done so they can serve longer than necessary; beat the mandatory 35 years service or 60 years age stipulation for retirement, depending on which one comes first.
However, it is pertinent to say that the delay in processing and payment of pension and gratuity to civil servants leaving the service mandatorily is the architecture of the failed system operators. It is a function of Nigerian system that has thrived on systemic defect. Employers of labour, including Federal, State and Local Government are to blame for failing to pay Retirees’ Benefits months or years after the processes were completed by the civil servants whose duty was to process pension and gratuity.
On the other hand, pension desk officers and other civil and public servants in the value chain of pension benefit processing, are also to blame for selfishness and unnecessary bureaucracy.
The integrated computerised system in vogue which banks the relevant details of all civil or public servants such as: Date of Birth, Date of Employment, Salary Grade Level, Rank, and Computer Number, offers those responsible for processing the benefits of those leaving the service the privilege of working ahead of their retirement date.
All the pension desk officer needs to know about the staff leaving service on retirement is available in the system if he or she is availed the opportunity. All service documents of every staff can be scanned and saved in the system against a verified staff’s name. So it is possible for the retiree to leave the service payrolled as a pensioner and paid the benefits accruing to them on or before the date of leaving office or a maximum of one week after. Anything above the period can be viewed as witch-hunt and a deliberate and calculated plan to frustrate the senior citizens who have spent all their productive years serving their nation and state.
If civil and public servants receive their pension and gratuity soon after retirement, no doubt, no civil servant will be caught in the web to alter date of birth or date of entering the service, because it is unnecessary, except for those that cheating and lying are their second nature. Many would prefer exploring other avenues to generate and diversify source of income while they are still strong at retirement, to remaining in the system.
The Integrated Computerised and Payroll System has helped government and other employers of labour to stem the ghost worker syndrome and fraudulent practices because the relevant details of every worker is captured in the system. By the Data capture, those in charge of pension and gratuity know the retirement date of every staff already in government employment.
If workers in private and organised corporate establishments are paid their entitlements on the day of leaving the service, those in Government ministries, Departments and Parastatals can as well benefit from the gesture.
In the good days of the civil service when it was dignifying and a pride to do white collar job, civil and public servants receive their entitlements as and when due. The stress of accessing one’s benefits as evident today was alien to the civil/public service.
The computerised system ends the unnecessary bureaucratic innuendos associated with the civil service. It will also end the alleged Shylock attitude, fraudulent kickbacks that some of those responsible for processing retirees’ benefit compel retirees to go through.
It avails the government the knowledge of how many staff are due retirement and how much the government is expected to pay to the disengaging staff, long before the prospective retirees’ due date.
Except for ulterior motive, and the antics of those who take delight in the suffering of people and feed through the crude bureaucratic processes of moving file from one desk to the other, the dividends of the computerised civil service system should be savoured and optimally utilised.
In this digital, information and communications technology-driven service with the capacity of reducing the world into a village, it is trite, unacceptable and counter productive for retirees to submit service documents when all the required and necessary documents relating to a civil servant should be in a computerised system that can be accessed by pension desk officers and others in the value chain of processing of pension and gratuity.
It is possible for retirees to stay in the comfort or obscurity of their homes and receive relevant information instead of subjecting them to the undignifying experience of documentation under protracted queue.
The public service should explore ease of doing service to obtain maximum productivity. In civilised climes where wages are paid on man-hours, time is a critical resource to development of society and people.
We should keep pace with changing times with its inevitable realities if we must remain relevant. The development of a society and the level of productivity is proportional or response to the dynamics of society.
It is time to treat retirees as senior citizens indeed.
By: Igbiki Benibo
Opinion
Soludo’s Mandate: Austerity Or Prudence?
The Executive Governor of Anambra state, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, recently celebrated the second anniversary of his administration in office. Prof. Soludo won the Anambra State 2021 Governorship elections with a remarkable landslide, in one of Nigeria’s most popular and freest elections. A professor of Economics and former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who spearheaded banking sector reforms and reconsolidation that became points of reference, Prof Soludo was heralded as the messiah of Anambra State, especially as he promised to make the state the “Dubai and Japan of Africa.”
But mid-way into his administration, the euphoria about the Soludo magic has long dissipated. The disappointed and well-wishers who gathered at the venue of his anniversary at Awka, may have come to get first-hand account of the happenings and to reassess their stand. Usually such events are opportunities for office holders to recount their accomplishments. Governor Soludo, while narrating a litany of achievements, said he runs an austere government in the state to the point of claiming not taking any salaries since assumption of office, and that even the first lady does not have any car allocation from the State.
What stands out however, is that the governor said he has insisted not to borrow, even though records show that the governor has sought and got approval from the State House of Assembly to borrow N100 billion.
So far, Soludo’s decision not to borrow is commendable, because records show that as at January, 2023 the State’s debt deductions stood at N872,425,828.86 per month, which was 27.8 per cent of net statutory allocation and 12.4 per cent of total allocation. Today, that burden is more than double due to naira devaluation.
Additional kudos goes to Soludo from Anambra’s 2024 budget summary documents, which shows that the approved 2023 budget estimate of N260,394,690,434 yielded a revenue of only N155,647,114,526.22 out of which the State spent only N76,905,169,399.35 to realise a whopping surplus of N78,741,945,126.87, in 2023.
However, how austere is Soludo’s administration? And is austerity a measure of development?
As sympathetic as the first family’s acclaimed self-denial may sound, the office of the first lady is not a constitutional creation, and therefore has no entitlements. The governor’s basic salary is N185,306.75, while his hardship and constituency allowances are N92,654.37 and N370,617.50, respectfully, all of which sum to N648,578.62, a negligible amount compared to the governor’s monthly security vote of N850 million, amounting to over N10 billion per year, plus other perks of office.
Former Governor Obiano is currently facing charges of diverting N4 billion from security votes. Soludo should have told the public if he has cut down such humongous allowances.
Anambra State’s approved 2024 budget of N410,132,225,272.11 also shows that the governor’s office receives N11,199,200,089.19 comprising personnel bills of N4,668,243,574.08 and capital expenditure sum of N6,530,956,515.11, for the State’s Boundary Commission, Anambra State Public Procurement Agency, Anambra State Investment Promotion & Protection Agency, Anambra State Action Commission on AIDS (ANSACA), Christian Pilgrims Board, Muslim Pilgrims Board, Anambra State Small Business Agency (ASBA), Greater Onitsha Development Agency and the Greater Nnewi Development Agency, whereas these agencies should belong to requisite ministries, while the office of the governor is saddled with developmental concerns.
On the social sector, Soludo’s administration allocates a paltry annual purse of N175,000 for the upkeep of each secondary school in the state, which translates to less than N60,000 per term, and may be the reason some principals got tempted to request fees from students.
The plight of 656 health centres in the state are more pitiable as most receive N140,000 per year, which is about N11,667 to fuel generators and other expenditures.
The Orumba General Hospital is allocated N105,000. The State should be more realistic in funds allocation to ensure that meager funds do not stifle essential institutions.
Anambra’s 21 local councils that draw a total monthly federal allocation of over N8 billion, continue to be ruled by illegal Transition Committee Chairmen appointed by the governor, thus denying the state of political tutelages at the council levels that groom vibrant politicians to the national level, while Anambra State Independent Electoral Commisson lies idle with allocation of N197,301,110.40.
As for roads construction, the governor may have done well, with the Ekwulobia on-going project standing most prominent, but what is on ground across the State lags far behind expectations. It took him two years to deliver his flagship campaign promise at Okpoko in Onitsha, combined with a re-election fever to deliver the Opkunoeze road at Nnewi, probably wary of Senator Ifeanyi Uba’s factor.
In a country where politicians envision themselves as construction project management officers, road works, however inappropriate, have become the be all of the average. But for a professor of Economics who had sat at the vintage position of a Central Bank governor, where the impacts of policies and big industries are clearly understood, there are far bigger development expectations for which Soludo’s coming sounded messianic.
While his tax administration reforms are commendable, the brigandage of the Ocha Brigade and ANJET are eliciting sorrowful tales from the masses. Insecurity remains a terror in the state.
This is unlike Alex Otti of Abia State who has initiated rapid ‘positive disruptions as Soludo likes to coin it and capped it with Geometric Power’s 24-hour of electricity in Aba. In Imo State, Seplat Energy and Nigeria Gas Infrastructure Company (NGIC) are rounding-up a $700 million ANOH Gas Processing Plant, while Shell/NNPC is completing a $3.5 billion Obiafu-Obrikom-Oben OB3 gas pipeline network, despite insecurity, to link the Escravos-Lagos pipeline system. Moreso, Shell has just empowered youths from the host communities of Assa, Ochia, Awarra, Obile, Avu, Obissima, Obuomadike, Ununwaku, Ohoba, Obitti and Umuapu, who graduated from its one-year training. Road construction and contracts in Imo would be usual community development accompaniments.
While the rat-race for revenue drives continue in Anambra, the State sits on 50 billion barrels of crude oil reserve, and 10 trillion cubic feet of gas waiting development. Dr. ABC Orjiako, is from Anambra State, and Mr. Emeka Offor’s Chrome Group, whose Interstate Electric Company Ltd are stakeholders in Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) and the Alaoji power plant. Its obvious the State has the human resources to develop its potentials, but needs prudent leadership.
Anambra, home to the Innoson Car Assembly plant, industries and businesses that are suffocating under poor electricity, needs visionary managers that draw down greater benefits, even if they do not forego salaries.
By: Joseph Nwankwo
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