Energy crisis: Varsities budget N1bn, get less annually — NUC boss

The Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, says Nigerian public universities budgeted N1 billion for energy on annual basis but mostly got between N11 million and N12 million on monthly basis.

According to Rasheed, this amount is actually not adequate for the smooth running of institutions.

He made the assertion during a Pre-Convocation Lecture of the 4th Combined Convocation of Bingham University in Karu on Friday.

The topic was : “Issues in the Nigerian Tertiary Education System“.

He said that there was need to invest more in the education sector as the impact of low education budget tended to high illiteracy rate.

“We need to be a little bit more serious with our education sector in this country.

“ Public universities have to budget close to one billion naira  for energy every year to buy diesel, pay NEPA, service generator, attend to some other things and what does the government give them?.

”  Today at the National Assembly, we are going for federal universities budget defence and we hope that if we are lucky, the National Assembly may allocate between N11mllion to N12million per month as overheads to take charge of energy every month.

” But in reality, what universities spend is between N60 million to N80million monthly to pay for electricity and that is why there is inadequacies of water, counselling, support for teachers, communication, internet and cleaning services,” he said.

The executive secretary said that in many universities,  there was a huge infrastructural deficit with grossly inadequate lecture halls, laboratories , offices, hostels internet and electrical facilities among others.

He, therefore, commended TETFund for its interventions role saying that without them, most universities would have gone into extinction.

Rasheed, while also speaking on the impact of educational budget on governance and development in Nigeria, said the impact of low spending on education by past and present administrations was evidence across the country .

“The widening gap of out-of-school children which currently stands at 18.5m is the highest in the world .

“ The figure has jumped from 10 million as parents withdraw their children from school for fear of abduction, kidnapping and the rest so the illiteracy rate now stands at 78 million while tertiary enrollment  is about 10.1 per cent.

“ This has affected youths development index which place Nigeria 161 out of 181, as disheartening as the rate is, it describe how the youths are increasing frustrated and in disillusion in this country.

“This is happening as a result of low funding for education especially at the local government level

“The quality of Nigeria primary education is ranked 120 out of 136 in the world as a result of the outcome of inadequate funding of education,” he said.

He, therefore, called for more investment in education to get to where we ought to be as a country, while also calling for massive technical skills as well as building more schools and equipping them with adequate equipments.

He added that the issues of governance was posing a lot of challenges in tertiary institutions especially the public institutions.

According to him, the key to the survival of private universities is the strong governing council but this is not so with public universities.

Rasheed said that the neglect of education was an invitation to chaos and disorder in the society, hence, adequate attention must be given to education sector to enhance national development. (NAN)