The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, has justified the Nigerian government’s decision to place a seven-year ban on the establishment of new federal tertiary institutions, revealing that there is a federal university in the country with about 1,200 staff members and fewer than 800 students.
Alausa disclosed this while speaking after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting held at the presidential villa on Wednesday. He describes such situations as a waste of government resources. “Let me give you specific examples of one university in one of the regions in the country. They have less than 800 students, and they have a staff strength of 1200,” he said. This is the commonality in our federal institutions. Several federal universities today have fewer than 2000 students. So, it is just a waste of government resources.
While Alausa did not name the university, it has been widely speculated to be one of the newly established federal universities. He said the challenge with Nigeria’s tertiary institutions was not access, insisting that the government would rather improve the quality of the existing institutions than build new ones. He has also directed that the 2025 Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) be used for the rehabilitation of existing infrastructure.
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