From Garba Abdullahi Bagwai, in Kano
The need for Nigerian universities to explore sustainable ways of funding and maintaining their academic activities has become a subject of discussion among academics and education stakeholders.
This was the focus of a one-day public lecture on the sustainability of Nigerian universities.
Presenting a paper titled “Development Dynamics and Sustainability of Nigerian Universities,” Professor Ahmad Muhammad Tsauni said university sustainability required a deliberate transition from dependence to diversification, crisis management to resilience, passive compliance to adaptive governance, institutional isolation to strategic partnerships and individual ownership to collective responsibility.
Professor Tsauni also called on Nigerian universities to reduce unnecessary energy consumption and invest in alternative energy sources, while strengthening energy management and adopting life-cycle cost considerations in infrastructure and procurement decisions.
He said, according to statistics from the National Universities Commission (NUC), Nigeria currently has 328 universities, comprising 77 federal universities, 69 state-owned universities and 182 private universities.
However, he noted that the institutions were facing various challenges to their sustainability.
The university don said the expansion of the university system was not necessarily a problem, but stressed that expansion must be matched with adequate funding, staffing, infrastructure and student support.
He added that every new institution and academic programme should demonstrate adequate capacity, academic quality and long-term viability, saying that growth in access must be accompanied by corresponding resources.
Professor Tsauni defined university sustainability as the capacity of an institution to remain financially viable, academically relevant, operationally effective and socially responsive over time.
“Sustainability is much more than the ability to pay salaries. Universities must diversify resources, strengthen quality and innovation, build partnerships and invest in people” Tsauni said.
He urged universities to work together as one family to build institutions that are financially resilient, academically relevant, technologically adaptive, human-centred and strategically connected to society without abandoning their public service mission.
The public lecture was held under the chairmanship of a former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Professor Abubakar Adamu Rasheed.
Also present at the event were the Vice-Chancellor of Bayero University, Professor Haruna Musa, and two former vice-chancellors of the university, Professor Sagir Adamu Abbas and Professor Muhammad Yahuza Bello.
