The recent disclosure on the floor of the House of Representatives that the nine new federal universities have no enabling law establishing them is scandalous.

It is scandalous because the Federal Government through its regulatory organ, the National Universities Commission (NUC), is supposed to regulate the establishment and proper functioning of all universities in the country to conform to standards. That it is this tier of government which is charged with such an important responsibility that is guilty of not following due process in the establishment of its universities is unbelievable. With this glaring failure on its part what moral right does the Federal Government now have to tell others what to do?

What is even more surprising is that already, the government has reportedly provided the sum of 1 billion Naira as take –off grant for each of the new universities which were to have commenced academic activities last month. This obvious act of impunity leads to another crucial question: From where was this money got when in the eye of the law the universities are not yet legal entities and the National Assembly has not made any appropriation for them?

It is clear that the idea of setting up the nine new universities was not properly thought through. Rather, the decision was taken to achieve some immediate political gains than to aid national growth and development. There is no doubt about it that this country needs more universities in addition to the consolidation of existing ones in light of the fact that annually only about a quarter of young Nigerians who are qualified and are desirous of pursuing university education have places in the universities we now have. Yet, as desirable as more universities are for us, what needs to be done ought to be properly done.

While it occurred to this administration to set up nine new universities at one fell swoop , efforts should have been simultaneously made to fulfill due process. What is desirable should also be legal and the impression should not be created that the end justifies the means. We are running a democracy and not some form of autocracy so scrupulous care must be taken to conform to existing laws and regulations backing the establishment of any entity. The era of arbitrariness, ad hocism, anticipatory approvals and all such features of undemocratic governance should be gone with the military and have no place in the current system. Conforming to due process may be slow and sometimes very frustrating but in the end it is superior to doing things in a haphazard manner as the conceivers and executors of the idea of the new universities may have since found out.

What is obvious now is that the easy path was proclaiming the nine universities into existence and decreeing that they should take off simultaneously at a particular date. What is now staring everybody in the face is the difficult one namely, ensuring that what are necessary for the universities to function well and fulfil the objectives for setting them up. For sure, it is not difficult to get the students and the non-academic staff but what about the lecturers? From where are qualified, competent and dedicated lecturers to be procured for all of the nine universities seeing that they are not items that can be picked up from the stores shelf?

Apart from immediately sending a bill to the National Assembly to formalise the existence of the new institutions, the Federal Government should begin to think seriously about how to fund them so that they do not become replicas of the existing universities which have a shortage of nearly everything that universities need. Education is the bedrock of national development. It is therefore unfortunate that many of our leaders at various tiers of government still do not take seriously the need to ensure that they provide the facilities and mobilise the citizenry and get them to acquire skills and competencies to enable them to contribute their quota to national progress.

Playing politics with education is, certainly, a luxury that we can ill-afford at this level of our development.

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