The Federal Government on Wednesday urged tertiary institutions in the country to develop alternative means of generating funds to run their activities with a view to surviving the economic recession.
The government also identified poor deployment of Information Communications Technology in the education sector as the reason behind the slow migration from traditional classrooms to smart classrooms, digitalised to facilitate teaching and learning in a creative manner.
The Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, represented by the Director of Tertiary Education, Hajiya Fatima Ahmad, stated this while delivering a paper entitled, “The journey so far and the future: The ministerial strategic plan for higher education”, at the third conference of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, in Abuja.
Adamu said given the economic recession, there was a dire need for tertiary institutions to complement the efforts of the Federal Government in generating alternative funds to effectively run the institutions.
He said, “Resource constraint is a challenge we are facing. However, the reality for now is the effective and efficient management of all resources available –human, material or financial. I would also want to urge you to come up with a framework for funding tertiary education to augment the statutory sources which are not adequate. This is critical because education, as we all know, is a critical nexus in the development process.
“With the present drive for global comparability and harmonisation of tertiary education qualifications, ICT deployment is a must feature in our educational institutions. The current deployment is low and most education officials lack ICT skills.
“There is also a shortage of ICT personnel across the nation. Issues of broadband and power outages are constraining factors that government is trying to address. However, we must look out for alternative support because government cannot do it alone.”
The position was also canvassed by the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, who stressed the need for stakeholders in the education sector to devise creative initiatives to increase the funding of tertiary institutions.
The Senate President, represented by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Education and Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Jibrin Bala, pledged the support of the Senate in enacting favourable laws to further assist the education sector through funding.
“Despite the current economic reality, our universities require much better funding in order to remain relevant in the field of competitive contemporary education,” Saraki said.
The Chairman, Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, Prof. Kimse Okoko, disclosed that there were ongoing efforts by tertiary institutions to generate funds internally in order to bridge infrastructural development gap.
He said, “We are encouraging our experts in our universities to get involved in publications so as to increase research collaborations leading to development and, thereby, increasing the internally generated revenue base of the universities.”
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