The need for government to focus more on funding intervention education agencies such as the Tertiary Education Trust Funds TETFUND and others, in other to safeguard future of tertiary education in Nigeria has-been stressed.
A legal luminary, Mallam Yusuf Olaolu Ali, SAN, stated this while delivering the 36th Convocation Lecture of the University of Ilorin, entitled “Tertiary Education and the Future of Nigeria”
.Malam Ali who indentfied inadequate funding among many other challenges confronting Tertiary institutions in the country decried funding of tertiary universities in the country.
He observed that though the United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organization UNESCO prescribed 26 per cent of national budget for the educational sector, just 5.6 percent was allocated to education in the 2021 budget.
Malam Ali who noted that apart from inadequate funding of education, the little allocated fund was never released as and when due, also identified Government interference, cultism and anti-social behaviors, outmoded curricular, lack of culture of scholarship, externalization of it internal affairs, waste and mismanagement among others as the bane of Nigerian universities.
The legal luminary maintained that the nature and dimension of the problems confronting higher education in Nigeria required a new approach on all frontiers
He however called for urgent need to restore the integrity of higher educational institutions in terms of work ethics and morality, transparency, productivity, democratization and total commitment to the deals of the ivory towers in the country.
Lawrence Afolabi.