NIGERIA: Urgent need for more academics with PhDs

Professor Julius Okojie (pictured), executive secretary of Nigeria's regulatory agency the National Universities Commission, has again reminded universities of the urgent need to upgrade the qualifications of academics. He said there were 35,000 lecturers in Nigeria and 21,350 of them - 61% - still did not have a doctoral degree.

Many universities have accelerated their postgraduate programmes to cater for lecturers and those from other universities who are struggling to meet this requirement.

And with many Nigerian university lecturers in the diaspora coming home because of the economic and financial crises in the West, some have been absorbed into universities to assist in postgraduates programmes.

The committee of deans and provosts of postgraduate schools of Nigerian universities met recently at Adamawa State University, the federal higher education institution in Mubi in northern Nigeria. Among the issues discussed was how public and private universities could fund postgraduate programmes.

One of the resolutions was the need to establish a permanent secretariat of postgraduate schools in Abuja, the federal capital and seat of the Nigerian government. Committee members believed such a secretariat would interact with relevant local and international institutions interested in postgraduate programmes.

The meeting set up a subcommittee to liaise with the authorities in Abuja and solicit financial and logistical support to build the secretariat.

"This is a step in the right direction. Postgraduate programmes are capital-intensive. And the carrying capacity of Nigerian universities was initially designed to cater for undergraduate studies. We want to convince interested parties to assist universities in running postgraduate programmes", said Professor Babajide Elemo, dean of Lagos State University's postgraduate school.

Background to the PhD problem

Julius Okojie expressed deep concern at the high numbers of academics without a PhD. As the universities commission's executive secretary and a former vice-chancellor in two universities, he has intimate knowledge of the origin of this lopsidedness in academia.

In the 1980s and 1990s the military junta deliberately underfunded universities and underpaid university teachers. Military juntas are usually opposed to the university system because they consider it to be a bastion of opposition against their undemocratic and iron-fisted rule.

This had two major impacts on postgraduate programmes in Nigeria.

First, the best minds in charge of these programmes left en masse for greener pastures in other countries. Entire postgraduate programmes collapsed.

Second, university teachers who, for personal reasons, stayed behind could not get their best undergraduate students to stay and to integrate into the dwindling postgraduate schools. The salary structure in universities demotivated potential postgraduate students.

"I remember that the military junta encouraged what is known in political economy as 'bankocracy': that is, all category of staff in the banking sector were the highest paid apart from the 'soldiers'. A clerk in the bank earned more than a lecturer with a masters degree.

"The best minds, who ought to be in the universities, moved to the banks - and so, after more than two decades postgraduate schools collapsed and bankocracy reigned supreme," reminisced Ishaku Bello, a higher education consultant based in Lagos.

Only with the return of formal democracy in the 1990s did government make funds available to revive postgraduate studies.

Led by President Olusegun Obasanjo, the democratic government indirectly assisted postgraduate programmes by ceasing funding the Liberian civil war, which was draining Nigeria's public coffers to the tune of about US$1 million a day.

The immediate effect of the 'peace dividend' was a substantial increase in lecturer salaries. And the brain drain gradually slowed, although it did not stop.

Democracy encouraged private investment in tertiary institutions, and the number of universities burgeoned. Within a decade the country had established about 30 private universities, although demand for lecturers meant that many were accepted without doctoral degrees.

PhD ultimatum prompted new strategies

Two years ago the National Universities Commission gave an ultimatum of three years to lecturers not in possession of a doctoral degree, to remedy this or lose their jobs.

But according to Professor Femi Shaka of the department of theatre arts at the University of Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta region: "This ultimatum cannot work, because there is no replacement for this category of staff.

"It takes a minimum of 10 years to train a PhD student. And Nigeria has about 108 universities. Who will teach the students if they [staff] are relieved of their jobs?"

Despite the complexity of the situation, there are a number of improvement strategies in place.

First-generation universities have introduced mechanisms to accelerate their postgraduate programmes. And with the encouragement of the universities commission, the annual intake of postgraduate students has steadily increased.

Second- and third-generation universities send their staff to these older universities to conclude doctoral programmes. These postgraduate students are supported with scholarships, bursaries and grants, as well as paid study leave.

Nigerian universities also send quite a few postgraduate students to universities in South Africa and Ghana. In South Africa they are mostly in departments of computer science, mathematics, architecture and engineering, while universities in Ghana have registered Nigerians for PhDs in law.

Some Nigerian universities are taking advantage of Europe's postgraduate scheme, the Erasmus programme, which allows Nigerian PhD students to have two supervisors: one in a European university and the other in a Nigerian university.

The University of Nancy in France, under the Erasmus programme, signed a memorandum of understanding, now in its fourth year, with four Nigerian universities to provide academics with computer science PhD programmes. Some of the lecturers from these universities have successfully obtained their doctoral degrees.

Professor David Amos, a Nigerian who coordinates this programme at the University of Nancy, is encouraged by the determination of Nigerian students to succeed. He confirmed that successful students had returned home to their various universities.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities has been insisting on the need for public and private universities to be funded at a considerably higher level in terms of the proportion of the national budget allocated to higher education.

Ngozi Uche, a lawyer in Abuja, said Nigeria had the financial muscle to do this, among other things to benefit postgraduate programmes.