Lately, I have been pondering over the proposed Information and Communications Technology University by the Federal Government, which the Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, said his ministry would establish this year.
Chiefly in actualising the vision, therefore, is the ability of the minister to rally stakeholders on policy, infrastructural development and patronage of indigenous companies. “We need to patronise our local companies. Our patronage of foreign companies will continue to encourage capital flight,” Shittu recently said.
However, The PUNCH editorial of January 9, 2017 titled, “New public universities are unnecessary” frankly took the words out of my mouth. Here is the opening paragraph: “Once again, the Federal Government has concluded plans to establish at least two new universities in 2017. Both are specialised institutions, according to the ministers involved. The Nigerian Maritime University is expected to commence operations next September, while the ICT university will be launched in March.
Similarly, the Ogun State Government is working on ‘the necessary details’ to upgrade the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic to a university of technology and establish another polytechnic in Ipokia, a town in the west senatorial district of the state. These proposals are wide of the mark. Currently, there are 152 universities in the country, most of them in a shambles.
I honestly might just end this piece with the words “enough said!” But I won’t because I have some thoughts to share. Recently, I visited the Department of Petrochemical Engineering at the University of Lagos and what I saw was simply scandalous. There is absolutely no way graduates of that department and even those of many other departments in most of our public schools can compete with the rest of the world if nothing is done.
As a lawyer, Shittu needs no tutorial on the fact that a good policy is the bedrock of setting the pace of any nation’s development. In other words, no nation will develop beyond the quality of policies it puts in place and implements. Needless to stress that our past myopic mono-economic disposition is to blame for the shambolic nature of our present economy.
Our past leaders, aside from placing our collective destinies in a single basket of oil and gas, ditching the ICT, agriculture, other human and natural resources, sheepishly left the door open to foreigners, giving them unfettered freedom to abuse our systems. Is CFA calling for outright ban of foreign ICT products? Both now and in the future, I will never support such move, but introducing internal models for modulation applies here.
At this juncture, let me pass this message: establishing a foremost, premium and leading ICT university without adequate policy direction on how to — Finish Reading on the Punch Website
