Tertiary education in Nigeria plagued with many challenges, needs total overhaul

The higher education in Nigeria is plagued with many challenges and needs a total overhaul, the Minister of education, Tahir Mamman has declared.

He said the current government of President Bola Tinubu is fully committed to fixing the challenges in the sector.

Mamman stated this at a symposium, themed ‘Advancing Open Science and Collaboration: The Role of Stakeholders’, aims to boost open science awareness among primary stakeholders, including university leaders, librarians and directors of ICT.

Represented by a director at the ministry, Rakiya Ilyasu, the minister highlighted several challenges bedeviling the educational sector in the country.

“Higher education is an education designed to produce manpower for the social, economic and technological development of the country,” Mamman said.

“It is however, unfortunate that our higher education sub-sector is plagued with many challenges such as inadequate funding, corruption, inadequate infrastructural facilities, shortage of academic staff, strike actions, brain-drain, poor research, weak governance and insecurity, among others.

“You will agree with me that, the higher education landscape in Nigeria requires a total overhaul so that it can effectively put Nigeria universities and other levels of tertiary institutions at par with others around the globe.

“The current administration under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, fully understands the enormity of challenges of Nigeria’s higher education and fully prepared to confront them headlong.

“It is against this backdrop that Mr President has promised to improve the education budget to 25 percent.

“We need to understand that before we can harness our human resources, we need to be sure of what we need to do to fill in the gaps that have, over the years, inexplicably pulled us back.

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“We need to know the extent at which we have met contemporary demands of tertiary education globally and if it is not sufficient, how to address them.

“I passionately appeal to the roadmap committee of the Vice-Chancellor of Nigerian Universities to provide the committee with quality memorandum of how our education sub-sector can be competitive in all ramifications.”