Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has advocated for a structural change in the way university budgets are managed. He contends that the National Universities Commission (NUC) should be the only body in charge of managing public university finances in addition to its regulatory duties.
This claim was made by Oloyede, a former vice chancellor of the University of Ilorin, in an interview with Laolu Akande on Inside Sources that was shown on Channels Television.
He underlined that university instruction is extremely delicate and ought to be managed by professionals rather than being influenced by politics.
Oloyede said that this method rewards universities based on their political connections rather than their actual educational needs, criticizing the current practice of individual universities lobbying the National Assembly for budget allocations.
NUC Should Manage Funding for Universities
“The situation can still be re-engineered to provide us with what we require.” We must examine the funding source. For instance, the National Universities Commission (NUC) ought to be allowed to manage the universities on its own. “Assign management of the universities to the National Universities Commission,” Oloyede stated.
When the NUC was aggressively monitoring university budgets, he recalled his tenure as Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors.
He said that rather than allowing each university to defend its budget in front of lawmakers independently, autonomy in universities would be better attained if the NUC were permitted to coordinate finance and administration.
The more you can shoulder the burden, the more will be decided, he continued. “Now, every university goes to the National Assembly for their budget, for their defense.”
Data-Informed University Budgeting
Oloyede pointed out that in order to distribute funds equitably when the NUC oversaw university budgets, it depended on data-driven measures like student enrollment by discipline. This strategy made guaranteed that funding was allocated according to real requirements rather than political lobbying.
“It makes no difference if you know someone or not. The number of students and other parameters will be decided by the NUC. And the National Assembly and the Ministry of Education would be defended by the NUC,” he clarified.
He bemoaned the drop in capital development money, blaming it on the rise in university support staff, which he says has resulted in financial inefficiencies.
Connecting Student Enrollment and University Funding
Under the output-based funding model put forth by Prof. Oloyede, universities are compensated depending on the quantity of students they educate in each field.
“I think that with the manner we are funding and operating, we may reach a point where we ask, ‘University of Abuja, you are producing XY medical doctors, I wonder how much it takes to teach one medical doctor? We have set this quota for you. Now, we figure out (the amount). We won’t be interested in your capital or ongoing expenses. And to determine the quantity, we would have conducted research on it,” he said.
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Better universities, not more institutions, are what Nigeria needs.
In addition, the JAMB Registrar expressed disapproval of the growth of new universities, contending that the government ought to concentrate on enlarging and improving already-existing ones.
Instead of establishing factories and industries that would generate employment and stimulate economic progress, he drew attention to a concerning tendency in which politicians build new universities as a kind of political reparation to underprivileged communities.
Oloyede asserts that the quality of higher education in Nigeria would be greatly improved by rerouting funds to support already-existing universities, enhancing facilities, and making sure that adequate financing is allocated.
