BREAKING NEWS, Education
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The World Bank has donated N1.4 billion to 10 Nigerian universities under its African Centres of Excellence project to improve the standard of education in the institutions
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Aug 10, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT |
IN its effort to improve standard of education in Nigeria, World Bank has disbursed the sum of N1.4 billion to 10 universities under the African Centres of Excellence, ACE, project. Some of the beneficiaries of the programme are Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, Ile-Ife; Bayero University, Kano; Ahmadu Bello University, ABU; Redeemer University and University of Port Harcourt.
Julius Okojie, executive secretary, National Universities Commission, NUC, on Monday, August 3, at the opening ceremony of a two-day workshop on ACE Project Post-Effectiveness in Abuja, said the process of determining the beneficiaries of the project was rigorous and competitive. “We have gone through series of very rigorous competition to determine the beneficiaries of this project. A lot of capacity building and documentation have also been done. I am happy to announce that the ACE has disbursed the sum of N1. 4 billion to the 10 ACEs in Nigeria. The first tranche was shared equally among the ten ACEs in order to avoid delays in implementation due to low liquidity. It is important to emphasise that what each university will get after today depends on the results that they produce.”
According to Okojie, one of the results was number of national and regional students enrolled in new specialised short-term courses and Masters and PhD programmes. The aim of the project development objective is to support the recipients to promote regional specialisation among participating universities. “This workshop was therefore put together primarily to build the capacity of all stakeholders in this project in order to ensure they understand their roles and responsibilities. Emphasis will be on financial management and audit processes, procurements, safeguards, communications as well as deliberation with NUC team on the next steps,” he said.
Another objective of the programme is to meet the labour market demands for skills within specific areas where there were shortages. Nigeria has 10 out of the 19 African Centres of Excellence in the continent although the problem with Nigerian universities was low internet presence. But Okojie believes that the Nigerian Research and Education Network, NgREN, is solving the problem of internet connectivity in Nigerian universities, saying it will improve global presence of Nigerian universities.
“What has happened in NgREN is a big boom because of Internet connectivity to 27 universities; you can almost share resources, knowledge and findings. The people that do the ranking do not really visit universities; they go to the Internet and find out what you are doing. Whatever research we are doing should be sent to the Internet. Money is going into the system for research. I am not disturbed; my concern is whether Nigerian universities are meeting local and national needs; whether we are number one or not does not matter.”
Listing some of Nigeria’s universities’ achievements, the NUC boss said the Redeemer’s University Centre of Excellence had tackled the problem of Ebola and developed a rapid response diagnostic test that could detect the virus in 15 minutes. He said Nigeria could not have solved the Ebola issue if not for Redeemer’s University’s research; a feat which he said ought to have risen Nigerian universities up in ranking. “Ebola is an international problem. We have made breakthrough whether they rank us or not; but let us concentrate; we have to rebrand our universities, they are good. Challenge our students with students from any part of the world and they will always prove themselves,” Okojie said.
Tunde Adekola, a representative of the World Bank, said it was the first time Nigeria was receiving such massive support from the bank. He explained that the essence of accommodating state and private universities in the ACE project was to make it competitive. He said the goal of the project was results, adding the World Bank would monitor it to ensure efficiency.
World Bank had earmarked 80 million dollars grant for the funding of ACEs in Nigeria, which would be released in tranches. The ACE project was instituted in 2013 by the governments of Burkina Faso, Republic of Benin, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo and Senegal, with support from the World Bank.
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