 And we're saying good morning once again and welcome back to the breakfast here on Plastiv Africa. The conversation continues this morning and now we're moving away from states demanding high allocation from the federal government to a ranking of universities across the world where Nigerian universities were ranked outside the first 1000 and you know I set for a few private universities here in the country where once again joined by Nick Agulay who's also going to be speaking about this. Mr. Agulay, welcome once again. Thank you very much. All right now let's move the conversation to education you know which of course over time we've spoken about demanding better funding for educational sector and you know what the sector completely demands even in the news this morning ASU is you know complaining of once again you know it seems like the government renerging on its promise for a revitalization fund. Is this in any way shocking when you see that no Nigerian university made the top 1000 in the world? Mr. Agulay can you hear us? All right seems like seems you're going to have to reconnect with him. Gide Benson can you hear us? Gide Johnson I beg your pardon. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for joining us. Okay all right so let's take the question to you before we Mr. Agulay gets back with us. Is this in any way shocking that there's no Nigerian university among the top 1000 in the world? Well it shouldn't be shocking to anybody in the first instance if you have to lack my idea as a nation among the committee of nation where we run my idea and that shouldn't be a surprise to to anybody how many how many times have ASU gone on strike in Nigeria in the last in the last 25 years if we begin to in the last 30 years how many times has ASU gone on strike do we have university going on strike in other parts of the world like we do in Nigeria what is the diversity in terms of the faculty of your institution you know there are basic criteria that are used to rank this university. I saw something on video yesterday when somebody was insisting that the VC of last year must surely be an indigent where you have a situation whereby learning people and we say that the VC of University of Eloran Federal University must come from Eloran or the adult people will say the VC of Uni-Bend must come from Edusty. There is no pattern in the world where you sacrifice Mary to Christy for for for for for for tribe or ethnicity hello for federal character and the rest of it so academic institutions are noted for excellence if you are good enough you are qualified to add any particular position it is not based on on federal character it is not based on on state of origin and the rest of it so we are noted that in the past we used to have foreigners being part and parcel of the faculty of of our institution how many foreigners do you have in the faculty of our institution how many Africans do we have in the faculty of our institution so our university that are meant to be a a universe a city that is made about the universe and has become so narrow-minded that it has become it has become the enclave of some ethnic jingoist Mr. Johnson Mr. Johnson just before we move to Nika Ghoule I want you to you know to look at this it that's really you know about the internal politics that has you know also affected universities yes I would agree that that might be one of the challenges you know stopping the universities from growth but you know there have to be other factors that have limited the the ability of Nigerian universities and its educational system to blossom over time aside the internal politics let's look at the funding the infrastructure the the interest the government has in education some of all those factors haven't they been big enough yeah you talked about university and also based on research and innovation research and innovation now how many how many corporate organization in Nigeria makes available resources for the university system to come back on research and innovation how many foundations the way are like the Gates Foundation how many chairs have been endowed so we should not limit I just took the aspect of internet politics and which is influenced by a certain factor but the society at large how many people makes available resources in terms of funding in terms of enduring case that makes funders available for people you know we just appoint professors you know that part of the time once you appoint a professor there is a fund that is attached to that to that professorship but in a part of the what the funds are not available there are no resources for for research and innovation and if you are not engaged in research and innovation you cannot be ranked among institutions globally so what contributions do we need to knowledge what contributions will be to the to the larger society to the Nigerian society because there are two things which must be involved in as an academic vision is is is teaching research and community development teaching research and community development so if we use that our focus has always been on teaching research is tied to you get the funding what research are we making the output of your research is what you use to bring about changes in the society so it is it is it is it is made about a lot of factors which is outside of we expect government to fund it is not government that funds Abad it is not government that funds Oxford it is the private sector and the corporate sector because they have beneficiaries of the research and innovation of the investment system there are funds Abad there are funds and there are funds Oxford there are funds Cambridge so until we have a departure from our investment system relying on government funding and using government funding as an excuse not to do their primary function I've explained the three primary functions of academic institutions to you until we do that and until corporate Nigeria becomes part and pursue of the academic community whereby the researchers that our students are conducting are not just placed on the shelf those research are translated into ideas ideas that are implemented by corporate organizations to bring about meaningful development they will begin to have this problem we are having all right let's bring him Mr. Nika Gule there to continue his commentary on the state of Nigeria's education system and maybe even follow that up on how you know universities can maybe even be self-funded or generate more funds for growth Mr. Nika Gule thank you very much and I'm sorry the airline dropped uh incidentally I was a university teacher my first job was as a university teacher I graduated from the University of Benin and I was retained as a graduate assistant so after my MIT I came back to teach and I saw my mates who were in banks you know the new generation banks started to spring up in the 90s and there were any like 10 times 20 times more than what I was any in the classroom and what I did was I left this system to go and look for money elsewhere and this is one of the problems we're having with education in Nigeria because elsewhere government placed emphasis on key services to the citizenry education and healthcare and if you notice in most of the developed world these are the two sectors that the government does not even release to the private sector like you go to the UK the government is funding education and healthcare education is free all levels to air levels healthcare is free all levels primary secondary tertiary so Nigerians are the ones who have voted that our education is not of high quality because let me is not even the global ranking Nigerians have voted and what do I mean every parent in Nigeria is desirous of their child or world studying abroad if their study in Nigeria is because perhaps it doesn't have enough resources to send the child abroad so we ourselves confirm me to the whole world that our educational sector is not high quality enough for us and we're choosing to go elsewhere and the reason we are coming to this point is I let the blame on the doorstep of the government and the universities themselves number one the government is not funding education in Nigeria the entire federal government budget of Nigeria has education allocation of less than one billion dollars one billion dollars for education of two hundred million people I'm a checker in the United Kingdom over 100 billion pounds for education so in comparison you've seen that we're not funding education enough number two free without one billion the government is setting on new universities every day instead of improving on the ones that we have so we are now increasing the number of vice-chancellors because if you have a vice-chancellor the government decides to expand this university to take on more courses or more students if they want vice-chancellor but when you're not going to set up a new university you now have a second vice-chancellor to pay a second registrar a full gamut of administrative costs that are going into operational expenses instead of actually going to where they are needed to get classrooms to standard petitions where support for church I also place the blame on the feet of the universities themselves elsewhere universities are generating humongous money from research for us as you hear of astro-denica Oxford COVID-19 vaccine the university that partner with the pharmaceutical company to develop that vaccine and the university is now reaping billions of dollars now that the vaccine is being sold all over the world we had universities in Nigeria that are doing no research no innovation no invention nothing we're just producing professors who are writing papers they're not able to show for it if universities are actually bringing in innovation making invention the corporate world can buy and buy into that and that will make universities to become more solid financially to look after their needs we're not having that so this is my my first view on this on this software website all right just to quickly also share i'm just seeing this now it says this is for 2020 for the most recent fiscal year and that June 30 2020 the return on the Harvard endowment was 7.3% and the value stood at 41.9 billion dollars it says the endowment was also distributed 2 billion dollars towards the university's operating budget supporting financial aid reset funds faculty chairs and more they just to paint a picture of what you know one university is able to generate you know annually and even more mr jenna johnson i want you to look at you know vice chancellors now and the or the operation you know that goes into a university here in Nigeria unilag and University of Josh University of Benin any of them where would you say where will you say the vice chancellors themselves are failing and the operational structure of the universities in andrew are failing woefully let me just correct one impression i'm dr johnson but i don't like to be the address of dr johnson i like to be simply address us to the johnson um that's um they would respect to our university system invest here the business school and the business school wants to produce graduate to grow into the business world to generate fund and invest itself cannot raise money to run his own program you see we have to think outside of the box and if university can't generate funds internal funds to run the operation how would it train students that will go into the marketplace or the public sphere to generate funds for the running of this institution you will put all the blooms clearly on government which sector in Nigeria is getting adequate funding is gx sector is it educational sector is it road and infrastructure so the thing is that it's for the university system to begin to look inward to practice what they preach how can a medical school for example if someone should start a private hospital like a co-hospital so some people started a co-hospital they generate funds how can last should not be last should be self-sufficient how should um legal state university teaching hospital be expecting government funding after government has established it they are getting patients and they are getting none of this so it is about us putting a responsibility if you want to be a vice chancellor you should come up with a template a template of self-sufficiency if you cannot run the university system based on the fund you can you can generate you're not fit to be a vice chancellor the same thing look when people talk about government is not funding government is not funding look at the resources jam the regulatory body for tertiary institution admission is generating now the funding that jam is generating should that funding be returned to federal conference or should we be taking to the university system so there are things that we need to do in terms of reform and in terms of looking in for fund they generate funding through the alumni association they generate funding through a corporate organization and i have asked this question i don't want to begin to call names people have made money from this country i asked if i asked you how many chair nigeria and doubt in academy kisichia in nigeria how many chair now professor appointment apply to research fund but you know how we do professor appointment in nigeria we do professor appointment because somebody published a certain number of papers papers that die on the shelf off but they do not go into the marketplace on the public sphere for people research that are not actionable but they are just theoretical based research and until we begin to look in one and look outside of the box you will not make any meaningful any meaningful progress out and universities not generate fund to understand that okay i can't i can't away from the funding now i want us to quickly look at how the state of insecurity in nigeria is affecting our educational system take a look at the university of jose you know it's been shut down now because of that insecurity in the northern part of nigeria we know what the statistics are saying so regarding insecurity and what really can we say should be the way forward because there's a question i've asked repeatedly on the breakfast what really should be the outcome is it to shut down schools because you know to prevent students from being kidnapped when schools are now eventually shut down what really progress can we make the schools are in the schools are in the community we shut down the communities the schools are in the community we shut down the community the school is in a state we shut down the state you see we always approach issues with a needy approach let us look for concrete solutions to solve them a problem that's the question mr jenny johnson what should be the solution to safeguarding schools that's that's where i'm going now there are security agencies the first responsibility of any meaningful government is to protect the life and properties of the citizenry there's a police commissioner in play two states there is a director of dss in play two states there is a military formation in in in in play two states the question you ask is how do we justify the security vote of the play two state governor how do we justify the security votes of the local government chairman chairman in play two state how do we justify the funding the the the police commission in play two states you see you see until when all people are counted when security issues happen like that have you ever as as anybody i'm asking you resign from the security apparatus of this have you resigned that on the account of their failure to provide security have you seen anybody resign as anybody may have comparable no he's as business as usual so what we do is okay we will be we'll be redeploy the police commissioner or we deploy the people that are in charge of the security in such places and we bring other people there and we continue with with it all right this need jack approach will not solve the problem let's hold people accountable you have a national security advisor what is he doing all right you are the chief of army staff you have people that are involved but they're not holding them accountable all right judy johnson um let's uh uh pause that um nika gulia i'm going to let you finish up you know and if you can do this in a minute because we're out of time i want you to speak on what if it is necessary to celebrate the lights of the university of ibadon which is ranked one thousand one hundred and ninety six uh we also have the obafamea world university you know which also made it you know on that ranking university of legos and university of nigeria i think covenant university you know further down um is there anything to celebrate with regards you know them being in those positions or you know would you also say you know that there's something they are doing different they're definitely talking that they are doing different which i believe when such rankings come out they need to be analyzed by the by the committee of vice-chancellors and also individual universities trying to figure out how they are going to improve on their performance so that their ranking will be better and i i i fight very much with the comments that are being made by my colleague on the panel today that uh there has to be consequence management vice chancellor tenor it's five years he has to have a blueprint of how he's going to develop the university and he has to be ranked on that blueprint after year one year two and if he's not performing then he should be sad if he's sad the next vice chancellor we know that his job depends on his performance and not just that he will sit in office for five years do his tenure and move so until we have to have consequence management in Nigeria humanity is not going to give up anything all right humanity only will place better in the consequence management environment all right nika gule and jillie johnson thank you both for joining us and being a part of our conversations this uh tuesday morning wish you a great week of pleasure thank you absolutely and this is where we will be wrapping up yes um just to clarify actually um covenant university isn't down it's actually the second rather than one thousand that's what i mean second second second ranked in nigeria yeah so yes that's where we draw the curtain to hear on the breakfast thank you very much we've been a part of our day uh good morning i am annetta philix remember you could catch up on our social media platforms simply at plus tv africa facebook twitter instagram and our youtube channel also at plus tv africa and plus tv africa lifestyle i am usao gie og bawa bye