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Nigeria by Munzali Jibril To read a more detailed account by other authors click here.
Introduction
Nigeria is a multiethnic and multi-religious West African country, with a population of 115 million. It is easily the most populous of all African countries and the largest black nation in the world. The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 1999 per capita was $1,300.History of Higher Education
The origins of Nigerian higher education go back to 1934 when the colonial government set up the Yaba Higher College. This college recorded a very high dropout rate and in 1943, the colonial government set up the Elliot Commission to advise it on the higher education needs of British West Africa. A University College was established in 1948 to award degrees from the University of London. University College continued as the only university institution in Nigeria until 1960.In April 1959, the Nigerian government commissioned an inquiry to advise it on the higher education needs of the new nation for its first two decades. Before the submission of the report, the Eastern Region government established its own University at Nsukka. In 1962, the federal government established a new university in the then-capital city of Lagos and that same year the Northern Region government established a new university. The Western Region government which already had 2 Federal universities in its territory, went ahead and established its own university at Ile-Ife, in 1962.
In 1970, the newest of the 4 regions (which had now been rearranged into 12 states) opted to have a university of its own, which is now known as the University of Benin. Its establishment marked the end of the first phase of university development in Nigeria. The 6 universities established during the period 1960-1970 are still referred to as first-generation universities.
The government established 7 new universities from 1975-1977 and also took over the 4 regional universities in 1975. The plan period also witnessed the establishment of at least 16 new state-owned and federal polytechnics.
The period 1979-1983 also witnessed the emergence of 7 state universities, 5 new federal universities of technology, and 2 new federal universities of agriculture. In 1984, a new military government felt compelled to rationalize this expansion of the system by downgrading 2 of the universities of technology and the 2 universities of agriculture to campuses of older universities. It took another military government 4 more years to restore these universities to full autonomy. Although all the regional universities had been taken over by the federal government by 1975, states began to establish new universities of their own. The trend is still continuing. As of August 2001, Nigeria had 45 universities of which 25 were federal (including one defense academy), 16 were state and four were private universities.
Enrollment
Nearly 1 million students are enrolled in more than 200 institutions in Nigeria. In 1998, Nigeria had 63 colleges of education, with a total enrollment of 105,817 students; 45 polytechnics, with 216,782 students; and 36 universities, with 411,347 students. In addition, 87 monotechnics, about 100 schools of nursing and midwifery, and other professional training institutions had an estimated combined enrollment of some 120,000 students.Enrollment in Nigerian universities doubled every 4 to 5 years in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It slowed down somewhat in the 1990s growing at an average rate of 12% system-wide and approximately doubling over the decade of the 1990s.
Faculty
The take-home pay of a full professor, which is only about $1,000 per month, is still low even by African standards. This, of course, explains why so many Nigerian academics and other professionals have migrated to other countries.However, legitimate as some of the concerns of Nigerian higher education trade unions may sometimes be, the unions tend to overuse the weapon of strike. Nigeria is one of the few countries in the world in which a few powerful trade unions can hold the nation at ransom over the slightest provocation. Academic staff unions in the universities (and increasingly in polytechnics and colleges of education, as well) call their members out on strike whenever they have any grievances they want the government to address.
Governance and Administration
The universities, polytechnics, and colleges have a governing board or council appointed by the government and have some internal representatives of the institution as elected members or members. These councils generally govern the affairs of the institution on behalf of the government.The management of each institution is headed by a chief executive officer, that is, the vice-chancellor in the case of universities, the rector in the case of the polytechnics, and the provost in the case of the colleges of education.
The federal government has established supervisory and coordinating agencies for each group of institutions: the National Universities Commission for the universities, the National Board for Technical Education for the polytechnics, and the National Commission for Colleges of Education for the colleges. Funding is channeled through these agencies, as are government policy directives.Funding and Resources
Federal and state governments are the main proprietors of higher educational institutions. In 1977, the federal government abolished the payment of tuition fees for all undergraduate programs in its universities and set the hostel accommodation fee. These 2 policies have remained in force through the present day.In 1996, the federal government funded its polytechnics at the rate of $251 per student, its colleges of education at the rate of $394 per student, and its universities at the rate of $300 per student. However, in the year 2000, funding for tertiary institutions, did improve significantly. For the federal universities, unit costs rose from $370 to $932, a rise of 252%. Current funding levels are low and lead to poor remuneration for academic staff.
Research and Publishing
Most of the research takes place in universities. Academic staff are required, as part of their contract, to carry out research and to publish the results of such research as a precondition for career progression. Nigeria has yet to define its national research agenda. According to the funding formula, 5% of the recurring funds are set aside for research at each university.Even when academics manage to carry out quality research, Nigeria has few publishing outlets. Academic publishing is not yet a viable venture and sustainability of new academic journals is a challenge. The consequence of all this is that the best research reports about Nigeria tend to be published abroad.
Private Higher Education
There are at present seven private polytechnics, four private colleges of education and three private universities in Nigeria. The private higher education institutions have yet to establish reputations and the attitude of the public at present can best be described as skeptical. However, given the crisis of access, private higher education institutions could have a bright future in Nigeria.Gender
Nigerian higher education faces an imbalance in the representation of females, both as academic staff and as students. At the primary school level, the gender gap is only 5.3%, while it is only 5% at the secondary school level. However, at the university level, it goes up to 15%, with females constituting only 35% of the total number of students enrolled in universities. A closer analysis of the disciplines in which females tend to enroll also reveals that they are critically underrepresented in engineering and technology courses and are somewhat overrepresented in arts and education courses. In the colleges of education, females account for 55% of total enrollment. This slight advantage at the lower levels of the teaching profession is not replicated at the university level, however, where only 12.4% of the academic staff are women. Since women account for 51% of the population of Nigeria, there should be a more aggressive policy to rectify the imbalance in their representation as staff and as students in higher education.Note: For detailed account on the state of higher education in Nigeria, please consult: Munzali Jibril, African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook (Damtew Teferra and Philip. G. Altbach, eds., Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 492-499.
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