The crisis of tertiary education in Nigeria (1)

• Published date: 08 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

For Ayodele Olukotun, childhood crony and former comrade in arms

Happy new year to all our readers. We are gradually winging our way towards a historic denouement. This is neither science nor astrology. The omens are quite puzzling. The social and political forces at play appear to be evenly poised. Rumours of requests for extra-constitutional reinforcement fill the air. Not even the most determined and sophisticated analyst can predict how things will unfold at this point.

In modern philosophical parlance the concept of overdetermination is often deployed to capture a situation in which several emergent contradictions jostle for preeminence and pole position at the same time. Their political wits scrambled by hostile reality and their resolve weakened by a demographic conundrum, the masters of the vine-yard have retreated behind a veil of silence, punctuated by Delphic letter-writing without oracular gravitas.

The clouds of uncertainty should lift in the coming weeks. In the interim, let it be noted at this point that any false step will have apocalyptic consequences for the nation. The structural mess bedeviling the country has been left unattended to for too long. It is not now that those who have been part of the problem should be seen imposing an unworkable solution to what is in essence a crisis of elite consensus. A crisis of elite consensus is an organic crisis of the state which requires consensus building.

Of the plethora of problems confronting the Nigerian postcolonial state, let us just focus this morning on the educational shambles. One can only pity those who will inherit the rot left behind by succeeding administrations. To be fair, the original problems far predate the outgoing administration. As a matter of fact, the Buhari administration should be commended for having the courage to reverse some of the policy failures.

One of these is the reversal of the policy granting polytechnics and allied institutions in the country the charter to award degrees from 2026. Coming at the tail end of this administration, one cannot be sure whether this is binding on the incoming administration. But the official argument is unimpeachable. The Nation's magisterial editorial of last Wednesday could not have put it better and it bears quoting at length.

' In the first place, universities and polytechnics were established for different purpose. Secondly, why are more and more students after university education, thus leading to significant drops in the number of people seeking admission into the polytechnics and allied institutions?… Polytechnics and allied institutions awarding degrees should desist henceforth and face their core duty of providing middle-level manpower badly needed for the country.'

One can recall that when this debate about upgrading existing polytechnics to degree-awarding status reared its head about one and a half decades ago, many spoke vigorously and vehemently against it, warning about the unsavory consequences of the proliferation of unviable university certification in a socially challenged environment. Now that we have dumped millions of unemployable youths on the job market with multiple exit visas to the crime industry, the chicks have come home to roost...