- 2018: R&D is too important to be allocated a paltry N8m by the NUC
With the proposed spending plans of the National Universities Commission (NUC) for 2018, the commission looks like an organisation that is essentially under repairs. The agency charged with regulation of university education in the country is to spend most of its budget of N4.2billion on salaries and one form of renovation or the other.
Proposed expenditures suggest that next year’s ‘Budget of Consolidation’ means to NUC wholesale maintenance of the agency with little reference to intellectual capacity building. Projects to consume the commission’s 2018 allocations include N60,075,664 for maintenance of office buildings and residential quarters; N9,739,246 for maintenance of generators at the secretariat; N3,357,885 on maintenance of office furniture; automation of the agency’s physical library, N85 million on “purchase of motor vehicles” for monitoring quality assurance; and funds set apart for replacement of central inverters and resurfacing of the commission’s car park. The commission leaves only N8 million for research and development, the most veritable means of innovation and regeneration.
Worrisome is the agency’s priority, evident in its disregard for research and development. We consider it an irony that an agency with the remit “to be a dynamic regulatory agency acting as a catalyst for positive change and innovation for the delivery of quality university education in Nigeria” has chosen to allocate N8 million only to research and development, while voting much more for replacement of inverters and maintenance of generators.
An agency charged with serving as catalyst for positive change and innovation ought to be in no doubt that it is not out of place for it to engage aggressively in research and development that can make it possible for the agency to sustain quality in the university system. For example, if some federal universities are already considering guaranteed power supply from renewable energy such as solar, it is perplexing that NUC has opted to still spend a chunk of its budget on maintenance of generators and inverters, particularly when the commission’s headquarters is in an area with abundant sunshine.
Admittedly, an agency in the business of data generation, banking, and transfer requires constant supply of electricity, but the best option to achieve this is not to vote money to service generators and inverters every year when opportunities for alternative energy from solar and biomass are increasing and even getting less expensive by the day.
Nothing can further deconstruct NUC better than the agency’s apparent demonstration of lack of interest in research and innovation. That an agency billed to provide solutions is satisfied with acting like a run-of-the-mill Nigerian parastatal beholden to asking for huge sums of money for recurrent expenditures and averse to building new knowledge to solve problems is puzzling. It is a no brainer that no meaningful research can be done with N8 million in today’s Nigeria. It would have been better and more respectable for the agency not to have any budget for research and development than to have one that looks so ridiculous and unbelievable.
We find it appropriate to remind NUC that if there is any parastatal that is expected to think out of the box under the current regime of change, it is the one. The agency is established to be an agent of change and to serve as catalyst for innovation. It certainly cannot afford to act as if it is futile to look for solutions, which R&D is designed to do in all serious organisations. If many of the universities that NUC is funded to improve is ready to switch from generators to solar energy, NUC should have no reason to be left behind by universities that it was established to foster.
