Universities ‘grossly’ deficient in financial record-keeping

A new study has found several Nigerian universities to be ‘grossly’ deficient in making their financial and administrative records accessible to the public for informed judgments.

The report, titled, ‘A National Embarrassment: Reforming transparency in Nigerian universities to unlock global funding and restore credibility’, surveyed 64 federal, state and privately run universities across the country. It has not been released online, but has been widely reported on.

It rated them among the least transparent tertiary institutions globally, attributing their poor performance in world rankings to a cloak of secrecy that discourages funding from local and international organisations to boost research.

Professor Andrew Haruna, the secretary general of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, said he had read the report, but did not want to comment on the findings. Other university leaders University World News approached responded in the same way.

Salient findings from the study

The study, conducted by the Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership, revealed that none of the 64 universities surveyed across Nigeria published their budgets, audited accounts, internally generated revenue and visitation panel reports on their websites, while requests for financial information under the Freedom of Information Act were either ignored or denied.

Visitation panels are set up by the president to visit universities to find out whether they (universities) follow due process in carrying out their functions, check their administrative processes and make recommendations on areas that need improvement.

Of the universities sampled, only nine institutions provided partial financial documentation found to be outdated, incomplete, or lacking in details.

“More than 80% of the universities failed to share audited financial reports, expenditure breakdowns, or grant utilisation statements through formal responses or public-facing websites. Not a single university provided a complete and disaggregated breakdown of internally generated revenue – despite many institutions relying heavily on student fees and commercial activities for survival.

“University websites, which should serve as basic repositories for financial data, were largely devoid of useful content. In many cases, links to budget reports were either broken, outdated by several years, or redirected to unrelated pages,” the study said.

The report further revealed that privately run universities were even more inaccessible, with officials citing “lack of authorisation” as a blanket reason for withholding information.

In contrast, it found that universities in other African countries, such as the University of Cape Town in South Africa, the University of Nairobi in Kenya, and the University of Ghana, provide real-time access to budget allocations, audited financial statements, and expenditure reports, helping them attract millions in private-sector funding and international research grants.

“By comparison, leading Nigerian universities – including the University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University, and the University of Lagos – earned donor confidence ratings of 3.1, 2.8, and 2.6 out of 10, respectively, according to Fiscal Transparency.org’s 2024 African University Transparency Index,” the report added.

Recommendations

Among others, the study recommended that a new University Financial Transparency and Accountability Act should be introduced to mandate the annual publication of comprehensive financial reports, including audited financial statements, budget allocations, grant utilisation reports and procurement records.

It advised the National Universities Commission to ensure that all universities publish comprehensive, audited financial statements conducted annually by reputable, independent firms.

The report recommended that the publication of financial data should be tied to eligibility for government funding, accreditation renewal, and eligibility for participation in state or federal intervention programmes such as the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, noting that universities that fail to comply should face sanctions, including suspension from competitive research grant programmes.

“The current five-year visitation panel process, originally designed to identify and correct governance and financial deficiencies in Nigerian universities, has become largely perfunctory. Many reports languish in government archives without action. Five years is too long to leave governance and financial weaknesses unaddressed.

“The visitation process should be restructured into a mandatory three-year cycle, with expanded mandates that cover financial transparency, procurement processes, governance effectiveness, and implementation of prior recommendations,” it added.

ASUU reacts to study

Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, the president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), largely corroborates the findings of the study. He told University World News the last visitation panel was conducted in 2021 and that its report has not been implemented years afterwards.

Osodeke, however, disagrees that poor transparency and accountability in the Nigerian university system is responsible for the institutions’ low status in the global university rankings.

“The university [sector] is being audited by the auditor general of the federation every year, and the report is online, but nobody will implement the outcome. In many universities, ASUU members are being punished, some sacked, and most often [one of] the reasons why this is happening is because of our insistence that we must follow the rules. So, the report captures most of the issues in the system.

“But a lack of transparency is not the reason our universities are not well ranked; it’s because of low government funding. Check the percentage of the budgets allocated to education by most of the governments in those countries mentioned in the report; what they set aside [for education] is between 15% and 20%, but our own is only 6%. So, it is not correct to say the rankings are because of [poor] accountability,” he stated.