Peter Okebukola, a renowned Professor of Science Education is a former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission. He takes a passionate look at the Nigerian university system, its challenges and strength, as well as the education in general in this interview with KAYODE OLANREWAJU

There is growing concern about the development of our university system in terms of quality and standard of the products and research profile, what is your take on this?

The concern is genuine and is reflective of the quality of the delivery system, in turn, a reflection of the attention paid by the proprietors of our universities (federal government, state government and private owners) to the input and process elements of the system. If you are providing resources to produce a rat, you cannot expect to reap elephants.

If the universities are getting less than half of what they require to produce quality graduates, what you get is half-baked graduates and mediocre research output. If the products of secondary schools which make up the feedstock to the universities are of such deplorable quality as we see these days, our under-resourced universities have no magic wand to crank out quality graduates in the number expected by the society.

Most of the 153 universities that we have today are groaning under the burden of quality inhibitors such as inadequacies of facilities, teachers in insufficient number, poor reading culture of students, nepotistic colouration of appointments into top university management positions and some tinge of academic and financial corruption.

We will continue to be mired in this muddy ocean until federal and state governments muster enough political will to clear the inhibitors. If at least half of the recommendations of the visitation panels to our universities over the last 10 years were implemented, we will not be where we are today. I am encouraged by some silver linings that I am seeing.

The new Executive Secretary of NUC, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed has grabbed a new broom to sweep the dirty stable clean. He has embarked on a number of initiatives that will restore the glory days of the Nigerian university system.

Today, Nigeria is 57 years as a nation and its university education is 69, is it not worrisome that no Nigerian university is ranked among Ivy League universities in the world, and how could the situation be redressed?

It is worrisome but explainable. The annual budget of Harvard University, which comes atop the league tables year-in-year out, is six times the budget of all our 153 universities combined. Ranking is largely based on quality of staff and students especially the international mix, quality and relevance of research and quality of infrastructure for delivering the curriculum.

The situation can be addressed by significantly improving the resourcing of our universities for quality teaching and research and encouraging our university management to improve the international mix of staff and students.

Following the recent reduction in cut-off marks announced by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), which was said to be jointly decided by all stakeholders, and which has continued to generate hoax and discrepancies in the system, what is your reaction to the 120 cut-off for universities?

Let me dispassionately examine the issues involved and I will make a few conclusions. First point to make is that contrary to claims by many, the JAMB Registrar did not wake up one day and ordered that the cut-off mark for admission to universities should be 120. He followed the due process which lays the onus of decision on the doorsteps of stakeholders notably Vice-Chancellors.

The Vice- Chancellors agreed that for 2017/2018, the minimum UTME score for admission should be 120. In a democracy, the voice of the majority holds sway. JAMB could not have done anything to change that consensuallyendorsed minimum at the policy meeting. Nigerians may wish to note or be reminded that Professor Is-haq Oloyede is one of the leading lights in quality assurance in Africa and not one to compromise quality in any shape or form.

The second point to make is that the matter of minimum UTME score does not tie the hands of universities to set their own standards by way of university-based, senateapproved minimum marks.

I have made some efforts to document such minima since the figure of 120 was announced. I found that almost all first-generation universities that have announced their post-UTME invitations to candidates stayed with 200 (in a few cases 180 for some science-based programmes); most state universities settled for 180 and many private universities, who in the first instance, were the canvassers for 120, stayed with 160.

Anybody who is keeping records like I do will tell you that this was the pattern last year. The 120 thing will, at the end of the day, hardly scratch the surface of the standards set over the years. Now, let me make a few conclusions.

The 120 minimum score is an experiment that will yield interesting results which I believe will inform the decision to upturn at the next JAMB policy meeting in 2018. In experiments, you start off with some hypotheses. I have two.

Hypothesis one is that the vice-chancellors of private universities, who think they will get more students by using the leverage of superior numbers to move the JAMB policy meeting in the direction of 120 will be shocked to their bones that the reason for the paltry number of applicants is not the relatively low score in the UTME of candidates but on account of poverty in the land as many parents are unable to afford the fees of most of the private universities.

At 95 per cent confidence level, I envisage that the advantage of 120 to improving enrolment in private universities will be insignificant and cannot be more than five per cent at best. In other words, private universities will only have a five per cent enrolment benefit on the 120 cut-off mark they gallantly fought for this year.

Hypothesis number two is that when the admission is concluded for 2017/2018, because of other layers of check installed by individual universities, less than two per cent of those admitted into the 153 universities will score 120, so the worry of Nigerians about the polluting effect of such low-scoring candidates will be dowsed.

The NUC said few months ago that some Vice-Chancellors are collecting as much as N5 million as furniture allowance and other forms of corruption in the system, thus calling for a probe of the system. What is your reaction to this?

My take is simple – implement the recommendations of visitation panels to the universities. Visitation panels unearth unacceptable behaviours in the governance and management of each university. In federal universities, it should run in five-yearly circles.

If unethical practices and behaviours are found by visitation panels and recommendations are made and implemented, we will have a less corrupt system. I recall the ICPC-NUC partnership which studied corrupt practices in the Nigerian university system. It was called the University System Study and Review (USSR) and recommendations were made for curbing corrupt practices in several areas of university operations. These include admissions, teaching and learning, research and financial management.

The ICPC Academy headed by Professor Sola Akinrinade is doing impressive job in building capacity of university managers in the implementation of many of the recommendations.

Nigerians are worried over the rate at which private universities are churning out First Class graduates in their thousands. As a key stakeholder in university education and as former NUC Executive Secretary, would you say this is the true reflection of standard of these private universities?

I will say yes and no. Yes, because a number first-class graduates from some private universities have outshined and outperformed first-class graduates from first-generation universities in national and global screening tests and examinations. I recall that for several years in the NUC-conducted screening examination for all first-class degree holders for the Presidential Scholarship Scheme, Covenant University first-class graduates consistently came tops.

In job interviews for Shell, Mobil, McKinsey and other top-class international companies, first-class graduates from many private universities including Covenant, Landmark, Crawford, Caleb, Afe Babalola are selected over and above first-class graduates from many public universities. What we need to note is that the number of graduates coming out in the first-class category in all universities – public and private is rising steadily.

The manner of implementing the course-unit system is an explanatory factor. With the current mode of implementing the course-unit system, students stand higher chance of being in the first-class category, compared to what we used to have in the past.

The chances of making first class are greatly improved in private universities because of the low teacher/student ratio making it possible for attention to be given to individual students.

Many of the private universities also run remedial classes and make-up examinations for their students. These ensure better performance in the semester examinations and bolster their Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA).

Turning the other cheek so to speak, I will say that the number of first-class is not a true reflection of the quality in some of the private universities. It is often a marketing gimmick to attract students and encourage parents of the worthwhileness of their investment in the high fee regime in such universities.

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Nigerians are worried over the rate at which private universities are churning out First Class graduates in their thousands. As a key stakeholder in university education and as former NUC Executive Secretary, would you say this is the true reflection of standard of these private universities?

I will say yes and no. Yes, because a number first-class graduates from some private universities have outshined and outperformed first-class graduates from first-generation universities in national and global screening tests and examinations. I recall that for several years in the NUC-conducted screening examination for all first-class degree holders for the Presidential Scholarship Scheme, Covenant University first-class graduates consistently came tops.

In job interviews for Shell, Mobil, McKinsey and other top-class international companies, first-class graduates from many private universities including Covenant, Landmark, Crawford, Caleb, Afe Babalola are selected over and above first-class graduates from many public universities. What we need to note is that the number of graduates coming out in the first-class category in all universities – public and private is rising steadily.

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