Professor Wande Abimbola, former Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Osun State, has decried the poor pay of university teachers, saying their monthly take-home pay barely equals a gardener’s three-hour pay in the United States.
He opined that without any significant improvement in the payment and provision of adequate facilities for teaching and learning, the Nigerian University System is heading for an imminent collapse.
Abimbola, who is now based in the United States, also took a swipe at the poor salaries of lecturers, saying what a professor earns monthly is just about what a gardener earns in three hours in the United States.
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He has therefore called on the FG to urgently implement a bailout for those working in the academic community to revive the quality of education.
Prof Abimbola spoke as a guest on the monthly interview discourse, Boiling Point Arena, hosted by a media professional and public relations strategist, Dr Ayo Arowojolu.
The topic of discourse was: “Nigerian Universities: Tower of Crises, Citadel of Missed Opportunities. Can the Lost Glory be Reclaimed?”
The programme, chaired by a frontline monarch, the Olowu of Owu, Oba Prof Saka Matemilola, was transmitted via Zoom and broadcast live on six radio stations, WASH FM, Sweet FM, Roots FM, Eri-mbe FM, Women Radio and Kruzz FM as well as a cable television, NSTV on Gotv Channel.
The former VC lamented that universities are experiencing the worst of times with professors earning scandalous monthly take-home pay, which is equivalent to what his own gardener takes for a three-hour job of cutting grass and trimming flowers in his residence in America.
Hear him: “A university system is an important part of the fabric of any nation. As at 1989 when I left as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, our institutions were still at their peak of quality. However, within five years or less than ten years after my exit from the position of VC, I visited the University and almost cried because of what I saw, the level of decadence. It has been getting worse since then.
“The most important thing about university is funding. We need to ask our governments, both at the federal and state levels, why they have been aloof and looking on until things got this bad. The federal and state governments don’t really care. Why are they looking on as if they are not concerned?
“The university system is getting worse and worse in every aspect. I don’t even know how the faculty and staff of the Nigerian universities have been able to continue to survive on the pittance they take as salaries.
“Recently, about two years ago, I went back to the university where I was the VC. I visited my department, and I was told that a full professor earns about N500,000 monthly. When we converted the amount, this is almost equivalent to the $300 academics elsewhere in the United States will use to take care of their garden within just three hours.
“So, if these governments are not interested in supporting the universities, they should wind them up. It’s a big shame for the Nigerian Government. When I went to the Ile-Ife campus, the lawns where children used to play had been overtaken. It’s a shame.
“The worst part of it is that they are still establishing more universities. Everywhere you look, there’s a university of this and that. And why are they establishing more and more universities when the ones that exist are not catered for? Why are they not funding existing universities?
“I think the best thing that we can do now is for the Federal Government to urgently set up a Commission of Inquiry on what we can really do to salvage the system and make things better. I think we have reached a stage where we need recommendations, which hopefully the people in charge will look at and use to make things better.”
Prof. Abimbola, an internationally acclaimed scholar and former Senate Majority Leader, lectures in some major universities in the United States, even at his present age of 92.
Prof Abimbola, who is also an Ifa Priest and Babalawo, lamented that Nigerian Universities, which used to be in the top 500 best universities ranking in the world and among the first 11 in Africa, are now taking backseat positions in the top 1000 categories.
He continued: “I am sure that we can do better as a nation. Maybe it’s a lack of understanding as to what a university is supposed to be, or the people in government don’t understand that. The worst thing is that people in the past, even the recent past, used to think Nigeria is a place where the universities are wonderful because the products are everywhere in the world. We have produced so many people in science, in technology and in the arts, who are teaching or functioning in research and development all over the world.”
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According to him, some of the consequences of what’s going on in the universities in Nigeria are that the professors are impoverished and cannot attend international conferences, nor can they write or contribute to international academic journals, adding that all these have implications on their ability to undertake research.
“Nigerian universities are slowly dying before our very eyes. It is a big shame”, he concluded.
