As the Social Science Academy of Nigeria holds its 2023 Annual General Assembly in Abuja under tight budget constraints this week, it dawned on me that the Nigerian nation has started reaping the fruits of undercapitalisation or underfunding of education and endemic corruption that started in the 1980s when the Second Republic was in the hands of President Shehu Shagari who assumed office in 1979. The civilian regime of that time started waging war against the funding of education which culminated in a three-month Academic Staff Union of Universities strike in 1983.
I remember that as an undergraduate, education was virtually free at the tertiary level in Nigeria. The cost of accommodation was just N90 and every Friday the housekeepers would supply resident students with one or two bedsheets with pillow covers, removing the ones on the beds for washing. The hostels were equipped with fridges and sometimes cooking facilities for those who might not want to go to the cafeteria. Food in the cafeteria was quite cheap and meals with chicken were served twice a week. Each meal cost between 50 kobo and 70 kobo, not naira.
Tea was free such that you could buy bread around shops near your hostel and go to the cafeteria to wash it down with tea. There used to be tea competitions among students. On Sundays, lunch would be served with fruits and/or ice cream. When politicians came in 1979, they claimed that hostels were not part of tertiary education abroad and made sure all the benefits were removed by the end of 1983, leaving bare accommodation for students. I was to enjoy the same hostel services in the United States some years later, which made me realise that the politicians were merely telling lies to change the system and free money from the educational sector to steal. The continuous reduction in fund allocations to the universities at that time culminated in the ASUU strike of 1983. Many of the politicians that changed the game were beneficiaries of the system they destroyed. Some even enjoyed full Federal Government scholarship under good governance from the colonial era, First Republic and early military governments.
As regards accommodation, it was a maximum of two students per room but there could be squatters who could not afford to rent houses outside the campus, as there were categories of students that could be accommodated on campus. No one was selling bed space to squatters as it is done today under entrenched corruption. Students were somewhat innocent and corruption was seriously frowned upon because it used to be among students’ politicians or students’ union officials. Any student union office holder found guilty of financial misconduct would be rusticated. I understand that Students’ Union Governments today are not different from the politicians on parade at the state and federal levels.
There was no TETFund and the government was the sole provider of funds. Most of the buildings then are still standing, stronger than those of today, except that the planning did not envisage the rapid population growth in the universities. Hence, the lecture theatres and rooms soon became seriously inadequate. Part of the problems had been the inability to plan for the long-term. Today, virtually all the buildings on campuses are TETFund-sponsored such that many students think, wrongly, that there is one Nigerian called Mr TETFund, a philanthropist on educational development.
Many of the laboratories in the old science buildings have special or personal laboratories for professors who, expectedly, should be sleeping in their laboratories churning out research outputs for scientific development nationally and globally. It was in the spirit of such research orientation that Nigerian academics joined the rest of their counterparts around the world in establishing research academies like the Academy of Science, the Academy of Arts or Academy of Letters, the Social Science Academy and others.
I remember vividly that shortly after joining the academic profession, I used to see stickers on the doors of some of our senior colleagues with the inscription, “I am a social scientist.” On inquiry, I got to know that a new association was just inaugurated and it was meant for the top echelons of the academic profession, the professors! That was in 1984 when the Social Science Council of Nigeria (now the Social Science Academy of Nigeria) was formed. It was strictly to promote research and the publication of research outcomes as it was the practice of such institutions across the globe.
Over the years, the SSAN, like other such academies in the country, have enjoyed both local and foreign grants (more from the latter) to carry out research for the benefit of the country. The objectives of the academy, which indicate its relevance to the existence of the country, include promoting the advancement of the social science disciplines with particular emphasis on the encouragement of innovation and indigenisation of social science theory and application, as well as contribution to knowledge in general and to the social sciences in particular; encouraging inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of social problems in Nigeria; assessing and determining research priorities and disseminating research findings in the social sciences with the aim of making social science research in Nigeria more relevant to the development need of the nation; and co-operating and associating with African and other international organisations with similar objectives as those of the academy.
The Nigerian academies, like their counterparts across the globe, are non-profit organisations providing expert advice to the government. For example, The United States National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine “provide independent, objective advice to inform policy with evidence, spark progress and innovation and confront challenging issues for the benefit of society.” That is the role of other academies in various disciplines in the US as well as in other countries and to that extent, they receive funding support from both the governments and the private sector.
Within the context of funding, the Nigerian academies, particularly the SSAN, have enjoyed research grants ranging from $10,000 to over $500,000 from international foundations like the McArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, International Labour Organisation, et cetera to conduct research found to be highly beneficial to the science discipline, Arts and the Nigerian political economy.
Not much has come solely from local sources except from NISER, the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Action Committee on Aids. When the foreign donors found that local funding was meagre and the results of research largely benefitted the Nigerian economy, they started cutting back, expecting local donors to fill the gap, but this was not so. When eventually most foreign donors shifted attention to poorer African countries, most of the academies started crumbling and research efforts were comatose. It was President Goodluck Jonathan’s government that ordered N5,000,000.00 annual support for the academies through the Ministry of Science and Technology and that kept the academies alive while it lasted.
In a typical fashion, President Muhammadu Buhari’s government killed the hope of survival of the academies. But it is not just the academies, education as a sector suffered fatalities at the hands of the Buhari government. For example, an annual budget highlights the priority areas of a government. At the time Buhari took over governance in 2015, budget allocations to education were hovering around 10 to 11 per cent of the budget and this was against the 26 per cent recommendation by UNESCO. The budgetary allocations to education fell continuously during the Buhari administration and ended with just 4.52 per cent at its exit in 2023.
Today, many of the academies that used to compete with their peers around the globe are shadows of their former selves due to inadequate funding for research; the hallmark of their existence. Some are virtually dead and others, like the SSAN, appear once in a while when they are able to mobilise funds for some events like the General Assembly. The theme of this year’s SSAN General Assembly is on the economic, social and political foundation of democratic governance. It will involve a guest lecture and a conference for paper presentations. Hopefully, the Federal Government will remember these academies when fulfilling their promises to promote education, and the country’s multibillionaires will also set up foundations to fund research in the spirit of those abroad. Research is the bedrock of education which itself is the bedrock of economic development.