It may sound untenable but it is true that Ghanaian university education is being funded by Nigeria. According to a research by the Chairman, Committee of Governing Councils of Nigerian Federal Universities, Mr Wale Babalakin (SAN), there are 71, 000 Nigerian students in Ghana who pay not less than N155 billion as tuition annually.

He said that each Nigerian student paid not less than $5, 000 per year to get quality university education in Ghana. Comparing the annual budget of N121 billion for the entire federal universities in Nigeria to the whopping sum that Nigerians pay as tuition in Ghana, Babalakin bemoaned the state of varsity education in the country.

His findings placed Nigeria third on the list of countries with the highest number of students studying overseas.

According to him, every year, the British Embassy records not less than 36, 000 student visa applications from Nigeria and the number is expected to increase with ongoing review of the visa policy.

“While private universities in Nigeria are battling with a highly unfavourable operational environment, their counterparts in Ghana, United States, United Kingdom and Canada have continued to enrol our children to improve their economy,” Babalakin disclosed.

Perhaps, that was why the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, Lead City University, Ibadan, Professor Jide Owoeye spoke extensively on the need for the Federal Government to partner with private varsities to revamp the dying education system of the country.

In his presentation, tagged: ‘President Jonathan’s public-private sector partnership: What role for our private universities?, at the annual luncheon of the Government College Ibadan, Old Boys Association (Lagos Branch), Owoeye stated that the government had erroneously left out the private universities in its implementation of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) policy.

While acknowledging government’s effort to dialogue with oil and gas, banking, manufacturing and telecommunications industries in its PPP arrangement, Owoeye expressed his displeasure with the exclusion of private universities, which, he said, were supposed to play a pivotal role in the implementation of the policy.

According to him, thousands of Nigerians who fled the country to seek quality education elsewhere did  so because they realised that there was  superior framework between the governments of those countries and their institutions.

“What Nigerians want is good, quality and affordable education, irrespective of who the providers of such services are. To this extent, the Federal Government must, as a matter of urgency, enforce a paradigm change in the style of administration pervading the regulatory processes,” he said.

Speaking on the significant growth in the demand for international education by Nigerian students, Owoeye noted that it was possible because there was no enough space in the public institutions in Nigeria to accommodate the students who were rejected through the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination and the Post-UTME.

“These rejected candidates find their ways through foundation programmes in British universities, which are better ranked globally than their Nigerian counterparts that rejected them,” he pointed.

He explained that the country had continually export its hard-earned foreign exchange into foreign countries, which as a matter of fact engage Nigerian academics to teach the students. “By so doing, we export not just capital, but also jobs, to these countries,” he stated.

To start with, the professor suggested that the newly created nine federal universities should explore public-private partnership to enable them dust off the tradition of unstable academic calendar mostly due to over unionisation of both staff and students, which again is inevitable in a public universities.

To him, the partnership will enhance the funding capacity of the institutions and invariably make the tuition fees affordable as the private organisations use the arrangement as part of their corporate social responsibility.