The average ratio of toilet to users in most
public universities is 1:20, but Nigeria’s
premier Northern University, Ahmadu Bello
University (ABU) Zaria, breaks the record with
an all time high of an average of 529 students
using one toilet.
Graphic details of how the university, now
celebrating 50 years of existence, has fallen
from grace to grass is contained in a report
which took a comprehensive inventory of
facilities and assessment of the general
condition of 61 public universities.
The Needs Assessment report put together by
an 11-man committee headed by former
Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust
Fund (TETFund) with former President of the
Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) as
member, says the state of facilities and
resources at ABU need “urgent attention.”
These record holding toilets are located at the
Asma’u Mustapha Hostel, initially meant to
accommodate 312 students but now has
3,178 students residing in it. With only six
toilets at the disposal of these students, an
average of 529 students use one toilet daily.
“The state of toilets in the university is of
grave concern. The toilets are grossly
inadequate. On the average, over 40 students
share a toilet,” says the report.
But it isn’t only the toilets that need urgent
attention, its learning resources were
described as ‘obsolete and non-functional’ so
much that, it’s two programmes- Architecture
and Engineering, which earned it a revered
reputation, now only have infrastructure and
learning resources that are in a ‘parlous state’.
The university barely has interactive boards,
public address systems, computers, magnetic
boards, projectors, video-needful resources
required to make teaching and learning easy.
As for the capacity of its 1,815 teaching staff,
42% have PhDs, 36% with Masters and 22%
have first degrees.
This commendable quality of teaching staff is
quite the opposite at a very young university
within the same state, Kaduna State University,
only eight years old. KASU is bottom heavy
with Lecturers I to Graduate Assistants
constituting 88% of the staff strength, only
1% are Professors, 5% Readers and 6%
Senior Lecturers. Only 14% of full time staff
are PhD staff, the rest are either Masters or 1st
degree holders.
The university’s inability to attract high degree
staff might not be unconnected to the stumpy
release of its total allocation. Though N4
billion was allocated from 2009 to 2011, only
17% was released which is about N700
million.
The crisis of dilapidated hostels resurfaces at
the Kano State University of Science and
Technology Wudil. Established in 2001, the
university inherited a large majority of its
physical facilities from Teachers College, most
of which are as old as 54years.
It’s only hostel “is improvised and very unfit
for human habitation. It is ramshackle and
massively overcrowded with looming risk to
health and safety,” says the report.
KSUT has only one professor, no reader and
151 of its 165 full time lecturers are between
the ranks of Graduate Assistant to Lecturer 1.
Laboratory space is inadequate. 2 theatres
constructed by TETFund in 2010 are the only
excellent facilities.
Again, state government funding is nearly
non-existent as only 6.5% of the N1.9bn
allocated as capital grant from 2009 to 2011
was released.
Usmanu Danfodio University Sokoto has a
total of 16 abandoned projects. Most of the
equipment in the laboratories and
machineries in the workshops are obsolete.
The university has not commenced any form
of automation in any of its libraries.
One irregularity noted by the report is that the
Vice-chancellor’s office has the highest
number of non-teaching staff- 390 out of
1,822.
In Kogi State university, every on-going
project is being funded by TETFund and all
abandoned projects in the university are
those of the state government. 23 buildings
are in a state of rapid deterioration and need
urgent attention.
Generally, there is an average of four
abandoned projects per university in Nigeria.
Most of the abandoned projects are funded
from capital allocations and are mainly
students’ accommodation and lecture
theatres.
The report accused university managers of
expending huge resources in erecting
university gates, wall fencing, and Vice
Chancellor’s lodge, purchase of exotic cars
while their libraries are still under
construction, lecture rooms overcrowded and
laboratories are bereft of basic facilities.
It is perhaps for these gross inadequacies, it
recommended that federal government stop
establishing new universities but rather
concentrate on improving and expanding
facilities of existing ones.
Proliferation of universities, the report says,
has not improved access or assured quality.
SOURCE:DAILY TRUST