By Precious Ireoluwa
Political Interference, Poor funding and shortage of skilled lecturers have been identified as the major challenges facing public universities in Nigeria and by extension has caused poor performance resulting in turning out students who find it difficult to excel in their various courses.
The former Vice -Chancellor of Federal University of Technology Akure, Emeritus Professor Adebisi Balogun made this assertion during the convocation lecture delivered at the Ekiti state University on Tuesday.
The lecture titled: Leadership, Governance, and the Performance of Public Universities in Nigeria was part of the lined up activities for the 29th Convocation ceremony of the institution, and the first of Professor Joseph Babalola since he assumed the position of Vice- Chancellor of the university.
Professor Adebisi in his lecture highlighted the various challenges faced by the state and federal universities despite that universities are primarily established to be problem-solvers to the society through human capital development, research and innovation, economic growth and job creation, heathcare, medical advancements, agricultural and environmental sustainability amongst others.
The erudite scholar lamented that universities have failed to perform in the areas mentioned because of political interference, dilapidated structures, poor learning facilities, underfunding and poor management of the limited available resources.
“All these have been identified as major impediments to achieve academic excellence in public Nigerian universities”. He said.
Prof. Adebisi while calling for improved performance cited leadership as the crucial aspect of higher education management which will in turn influence academic standards, research output and institutional development.
He maintained that effective leadership in universities requires the ability of the management to make independent, merit based decisions even in the face of political interference which is becoming rampant in almost all public universities.
The don therefore charged academic and non academic staff to maintain good relationship with the students noting that a university is the students it turns out into the society. He decried the attitude of some lecturers and staff towards their students and called for more collaborative measures that will foster student lectures relationship.
