Receiving a team of National Universities Commission (NUC) officials who recently visited Ghana to understudy the country’s university system, Deputy Head of Mission, Nigerian High Commission in Ghana, Mr. Mohammed Abdul Kurmawa, said a large number of private universities have sprung up in that country with the sole aim of defrauding unsuspecting Nigerian students and parents in desperate need of university education.
The most startling part of the disclosure is that many of the private universities are not only obscure and substandard but also fake. According to him, over 150,000 Nigerian students are scattered in such “scam higher institutions” across the length and breadth of the country.
Journalists who accompanied the NUC officials on the study tour were shocked to find some of the private universities located in a one-storey building. Most shocking was the operation of one of such higher institutions, Sikkin Municipal University (SMU), in a plaza and it boasts of about 90 percent Nigerian student population.
The deputy high commissioner also revealed that in 2012 alone, Nigerian students pumped a huge N1.6 billion into the Ghanaian education sector, the bulk of which might have been gulped by the counterfeit institutions. He warned parents against sending their children to just any university in Ghana, stressing that they should be concerned about the institutions their children attend.
Some of the students, who had the opportunity to interact with the visiting team from the NUC, blamed their predicaments on many factors, including the perennial strikes by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the inability to secure admission through the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB)after numerous attempts despite having the requisite papers.
The situation has been further exacerbated by the seemingly everlasting strikesembarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP). The “entrapped” students, therefore, called on the Federal Government to scrap JAMB and allow the various universities to conduct their own admissions.
However, Ghana is not the only favourite destination for Nigerian students fleeing from dysfunctional education system at home. Aside from the first choice countries like the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, Nigerian parents ferry their children to places like South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, Egypt, Ukraine and even the neighbouring Togo where academic programmes run smoothly all year round. In most of these countries, the students are exposed to unfavourable milieus.
Towards the end of October last year, a 15-year-old Nigerian student studying in a secondary school in Ghana, Austine Chukwuebuka Ogukwe, died in a questionable circumstance.And in December last year, two Nigerian students at the Donetsk National Technical University in Ukraine, Theresa Olaoluwa Oresanya and Bede Olunna Ogbu, lost their lives in circumstances bordering on alleged negligence on the part of the hospital personnel where they were admitted for treatment.
Nigerian parents ship their children overseas devoid of their guidance. Some of them end up as drug addicts, prostitutes, social misfits and a disappointment to their parents, themselves and the society that is supposed to be the ultimate beneficiary of the knowledge which so much has been invested in them to acquire.
Government has a responsibility to ensure functional education system for its citizens. Granted that the pursuit of overseas studies by Nigerians is a primordial obsession, there is a lot the government can do to make such adventure less attractive, especially to those who ferry their kids abroad as a last resort. These should include adequate funding of tertiary education to end perennial strikes in the sector, expansion of existing university infrastructure and relaxing admission process without compromising standards.
