Bursars in the Nigerian Universities under the aegis of the Association of Bursars of Nigerian Universities (ABNU), on Wednesday, decried poor funding for universities in the country, saying it is not helping research in the system.
They also said Nigeria is still lagging behind UNESCO’s minimum funding threshold of 15 percent of budgetary allocation to education while calling for a mixed model of funding for the universities.
A former official at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Sir Monday Onyeme, stated this in Abuja when he delivered a lecture during the unveiling and official launch of The University Exchequer—the official magazine of the association.
Sir Onyeme, who is a deputy governor of Delta State, explained that the rising enrollment of students annually has overstretched the meagre resources of the universities and such development would continue.
While demanding tax exemption for the education sector in the country, the former bursar said lack of funds has led to frequent industrial actions either by the academic staff or the non-academic staff or both.
He noted that this is why students prefer private universities because they can predict their graduation time, as opposed to the situation in public universities where timelines are uncertain due to industrial actions.
“If you go to some universities, you will see some old infrastructures that are decayed and abandoned because resources are unavailable to sustain or maintain them,” Sir Onyeme said.
The Deputy Governor, however advocated a mixed funding model in order to address the challenges, stressing that today’s bursars are not mere administrators but must become visionaries of financial transformation.
“The solution to this is a mixed funding model; we do not want to depend on just one source of income. We must be able to have the capacity to look at all the various sources of funding and put up a mixed model that suits a particular institution.
“We must transition to a mixed funding model, a strategic blend of transitional and innovative revenue streams tailored to each university’s context. It is a paradigm shift we must embrace.
“First, we must pressure the government to increase funding to universities to at least meet the UNESCO minimum standard. We should not get tired of pressuring the government, especially the National Assembly, so that the minimum benchmark of at least 15 percent is met.
“We can draw out a programme for the government to gradually increase the budgetary allocation to education over a period of time, maybe over five years. Since we have achieved 7 percent, we can make it 9 percent by 2026, make it 11 percent by 2027, and so on, till we get to that minimum standard of 15 percent threshold.
“The second source of funding that we are advocating for in this mixed model is an endowment fund and alumni engagement. We must make a deliberate effort to establish endowment offices for structured fundraising,” he stated.
On his part, the former Vice Chancellor of Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Prof. Muhammad Akaro Mainoma, called on the government to make all education matters tax-free, noting that “that will solve the issue of tax taking part of the government intervention funds to the universities.”
He, however, advised bursars to do the following to judiciously manage the scarce resources available to them: “adhere to strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation, accountability, revenue diversification, technology adoption, budget discipline, up-to-date reporting, regulatory compliance, stakeholder engagement, audit readiness, and risk management.”
Earlier, the Chairman of the Association, Dr. Hadiza Goje, said that bursars are custodians of trust, while linking the role of bursars in the university to the role of an engine in a car, saying, “No matter how beautiful a car is, if the engine is faulty, then the car cannot move.”
