The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, has called on the Federal Government to grant the National Universities Commission (NUC) full control over the management of university budgets to ensure better administration of tertiary education in Nigeria.
Speaking on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme on Channels Television, Oloyede, who is also a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, emphasized that the current system where individual universities defend their budgets before the National Assembly is flawed and subject to political influence.
Universities Should Not Lobby for Budget Allocations
Oloyede expressed concerns over the current funding system, where universities lobby lawmakers for budget approvals based on their connections rather than actual institutional needs.
“Now, every university goes to the National Assembly for their budget, for their defence, and the more you can pull weight, the more will determine (what you get),” he said.
He argued that the NUC should be solely responsible for managing university budgets, ensuring a fair allocation based on student population and institutional needs.
NUC’s Role in Managing University Funding
The JAMB boss highlighted that when the NUC was in charge of university budgets, funding was allocated based on a Universities Annual Review System that considered the number of students in each discipline to determine appropriate budget allocations.
“Whether you know anybody or not does not come in. The NUC will determine the number of students and other parameters, then defend the budget before the National Assembly and the Ministry of Education,” he explained.
He added that during this period, capital development funding was significantly higher than it is today, but due to mismanagement, universities now spend too much on support staff rather than improving facilities.
Funding Should Be Based on Student Capacity
Oloyede suggested that universities should receive funds based on the number of students they admit, particularly in professional disciplines like medicine.
“We could get to a point where we say: ‘University of Abuja, you are producing X number of medical doctors, what does it take to train one doctor? This is your quota, and this is the funding you get.’ Both capital and recurrent expenditures won’t be our business, and we would have built research into it to ascertain the required amount,” he stated.
Nigeria Doesn’t Need More Universities
Reiterating his stance on the proliferation of universities, Oloyede stressed that Nigeria does not need more tertiary institutions but rather expansion and better funding of existing ones.
He criticized the political trend of establishing new universities as a form of compensation to marginalised communities, arguing that the government should focus on creating industries and factories instead.
“Universities are now being used as political tools to ‘compensate’ communities instead of creating factories and industries that would provide jobs and economic growth,” he lamented.
Oloyede’s remarks come amid growing concerns over the increasing number of universities in Nigeria without adequate infrastructure or funding, leading to poor quality education and limited admission spaces.