A former lecturer at the Harvard University, United States and Provost, College of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences, Kwara State University, Malette, Prof. Abiola Irele, speaks on the challenges facing the nation’s education in this interview with SUCCESS NWOGU

Are Nigerian universities playing their roles as agents of development?

I do not think they are in that sense.  They should play prominent roles, notably in social circles. The universities should be in the forefront of a certain mode of behaviour. People should be rewarded for what they do, but the materialism in this country has gone really too far.

Again, there is exaggeration in all our values and the universities should lead a moral revolution in this regard. They should do this through advocacy.  In this country, if you criticise any aspect of governance, especially any security issue, you become a suspect. People do not take criticisms lightly here. No country can develop without self-criticism.

With your Harvard experience, how would you rate Nigeria’s education system?

This is a very difficult question to answer because when you mention Harvard, you are, in fact, talking about one of the top-ranking universities in the world. It is in the big league.  In the United Kingdom, its counterparts are Oxford and Cambridge universities.

We used to think the top university in Nigeria was the University of Ibadan, but it looks like other universities have more or less attained a certain standard. I am talking specifically of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

Again, I do not think the annual biometric ranking where they measure universities is very useful. The criteria are not objective and clear.

The real measure of a university should be in such areas like its teaching staff and alumni. For instance, because the University of Ibadan is the first, it has produced more in this category than any other university in the country.

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka, has also made tremendous contributions in scholarship, especially in the humanities.  The school has produced many renowned scholars in literature.

I want to avoid what is really discrimination when you begin to compare universities. All our universities have the potential to be great or excellent.

I spent many years at the Ohio State University and at Harvard, and what I noticed is that their institutions enjoyed tremendous support, not only from official quarters but also from private individuals.

The government supports the state universities over there. For example, the government supports the Ohio State University even in terms of infrastructure. I remember that a particular language laboratory was set up to keep pace with development in the Internet.  In this way, some of the universities over there have been able to develop.

The other way is through private endowment. Many American universities have departments and chairs named after individuals who put down their money.

Alumni also support and offer endowments running into millions of dollars. We need to develop this kind of structures here. So, if we really want to create firstclass universities, we must give these institutions the resources. This is the point I am trying to make.

UNESCO recommends that about 26 per cent of national budget should be for education. What is your advice since our government has yet to meet this requirement?

They are not doing this and Nigeria is rich enough to support its universities. The problem is that the infrastructural conditions in the country are poor; the universities cannot be divorced from the rest of the community and society.

In universities, for example, you cannot do serious work with the computer if you do not have functional electricity. The whole basis of electronics and digital systems is electricity. Without steady electricity, you can do little, especially in the sciences. We in the humanities do not suffer as much from that disadvantage.

So, until that problem of electricity is solved, we are going to have lots of problems. Even when you have electricity, the bandwidth has to be improved. Now when you open a computer, it is so slow. If you are going to have e-library, you cannot really work on e-library properly if it is so slow.  These are technical problems and there are many more issues.

So,  if we are going to develop the university system, we have to increase infrastructure and funding. We need good laboratories and facilities.

Considering the inadequate infrastructure in the universities, does it not affect the quality of the graduates?

Yes, it does. If you train somebody in chemistry and you have only one laboratory, how much chemistry can you teach when you have so many students there?  A recent report by a committee on the state of the Nigerian universities paints a lamentable picture. Some students were standing outside listening while lectures were going on in the classrooms. This is ridiculous. The point again is, let us get to the basics, university education is not cheap.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities and other sister organisations have been having recurring strikes, did you witness such a protest in Harvard?

When I was in the U.S., I never heard of lecturers going on strike. There, however, may be tension between professors and administrators over certain issues. But the basic conditions for work do not really come in for disputes or industrial action. I have never heard of anything like that. It does not mean that they do not have problems.