The Chairman, Executive Trainers Limited, Dr. Ayo Ogunsan, has called on stakeholders in the nation’s university system to stop politicising the sub-sector.
Ogunsan argued that politics and underfunding, rather than strikes, were the major factors militating against the development of the universities, particularly public institutions.
The expert trainer of tertiary institutions’ administrators spoke at a press conference, which was part of activities to mark his organisation’s fifth anniversary in Lagos on Friday.
Ogunsan also wondered why the Federal Government could go ahead to establish more federal universities when existing ones were going comatose. This policy, he said, was more of a political decision than a genuine measure to improve quality university education.
“The day politics is taken out of tertiary institutions in Nigeria, that is the day we will have an enduring sector. I don’t know the business of a president, governor and other politicians in the administration of education in a country. Politics should be separated from our education sector. When this is done, the desired development we all crave for will come,” he said.
Ogunsan urged the FG to invest more in education, adding that it should also give the managers the free hands to do their jobs.
“Appoint credible academics into the governing councils and empower them to do their jobs of administering these institutions. The Federal Government should provide federal schools with fund needed and also allow them to generate more funds to run the institutions,” he said
Ogunsan, who admitted that this might force parents to pay more, argued that it would boost quality.
“We are not asking the FG to charge tuition as much as private universities are doing but to revamp the university system at the public level, parents need to pay more,” he said.
He, however, called on university administrators to invest more in human capacity development because, he believes the mindset of most workers in tertiary institutions must be renewed with best global practices in education delivery in the sector.
The ETL, he noted, was established to train top executives in the nation’s tertiary institutions locally and internationally.
“We take executives out of the shores of Nigeria at least for five days so they could be trained without distractions. So, even if the minister or the president needs their attention, they may still need to count the cost of re-booking their tickets and the stress involved,” he explained.
