HOW GOVERNMENT HOUSES COST/WORTH MORE THAN VARIOUS UNIVERSITIES

 This is the expensive Akwa Ibom State government house.

We are running a stupid democracy in Nigeria, a system of government where only those in office are seen to be enjoying the good of the land, while the people they claim to be serving are starving.

The cost of building many government houses in Nigeria is far higher than what it takes to build many universities in the country with some state houses gulping as high as nine times more than the cost of building a university.

It was also discovered that in many states where Billions of Naira were expended on building bogus and expansive state houses for the first families, universities owned by such state governments were in terrible conditions.

In addition to this, many programmes run by these state universities are yet to be accredited by the National Universities Commission, the regulatory agency for universities in Nigeria, due to lack of fund. || But these greedy governors always have Billions of Naira to building new houses for their comfort...

This is the class room of a Nigerian university.

To accredit a programme for study in any university in Nigeria, there are minimum acceptable standards required by the NUC. They include availability of adequate facilities to run the programme as well as minimum number of staff both academic and non-academic.

A former Executive Secretary of the NUC, Prof Peter Okebukola, said, ‘’The requirements are essentially facilities and staff. Both need money to put in place. However, in the case of staff, a long-term investment is needed to procure quality staff.’’

Depending on the number of programmes to be accredited, accreditation of courses, according to him, could gulp between N1.8bn and N2.7bn with science-based courses gulping more money than non-science based courses.

But PUNCH investigations showed that some states that could hardly afford to spend as low as N800m on accreditation in their universities, spent billions of naira to build state houses for their families.

In Bayelsa State for instance, a Government House Complex named “The Glory Land Castle” gulped at least N24bn. The edifice, located in the heart of Yenagoa, the state capital, was initiated by former governors Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and Timipre Sylva.

The same state has begun the construction of a new Governor’s Office project at Government House, Yenagoa, at a cost of N3.8bn according to the state Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure, Mr. Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo.

Justifying the cost of the project, he described the impressive edifice as one of the best in Nigeria and West Africa with a captivating aesthetic ambience.

Paradoxically, there is high level of infrastructural decay at the Niger Delta University being run by the state government.

The Chairman, Academic Staff Union of Universities, Niger Delta University branch, Dr. Tuboukiye Sese, told one of our correspondents on the telephone during the week that lack of infrastructure had been the major problem of the university.

Sese said, “Honestly, the state of infrastructure at NDU is nothing to write home about. Successive administrations in the state have been neglecting the school.

“When the incumbent governor, Seriake Dickson, paid a visit to the university recently, he saw things for himself. The structures in the permanent site of the institution are those provided by TETFUND (Tertiary Education Trust Fund). The governor then awarded contract worth N1.2bn. Unfortunately, up till now, nothing has been done.

“In the university, internal roads are non-existent, office space is a sad development and student hostels are in poor state.”

He lamented that due to absence of staff quarters, academic and non-academic workers alike operate from Yenagoa, the state capital, a journey of close to one hour.

Though he could not be specific on the number of programmes in the university that are yet to be accredited, he recalled that many of the university’s programmes were not accredited during the last accreditation exercise.

He said, “We lost quite a number of our programmes during accreditation. This development is giving us cause for concern. As it is, many lecturers risk losing their jobs because of the development as students will not want to go to a school where most of their programmes are not accredited.

“The state government should help us in this direction. The university’s management is running round the clock and using its initiative to ensure the de-accredited courses are accredited.”

In the same vein, the Kaduna State Government has just completed a N9.6bn new Kaduna Government House/ Office Complex that was recently inaugurated by President Goodluck Jonathan. The state Governor, Alhaji mukhtar Ramalan Yero, said the project was executed in six phases.

But shortly after the inauguration, medical students of Kaduna State University stormed the street to protest the non-accreditation of the institution’s medical courses by the NUC. They also protested poor conditions at the Barau Dikko Specialist Hospital, which is supposed to be the university’s teaching hospital.

The protesting students lamented that the Faculty of Medicine started since 2008/09 academic session and none of the students had gone beyond 300 levels. According to them, the hospital’s ICU/dialysis centre has been abandoned; the pathology laboratory is not supplied with equipment; and all other works in various departments are moving at a very slow pace.

The spokesperson for the Medical Students Association, Hassan Abu, who called on the state government to address the problem urgently, said a set of medical students had been transferred to Uganda to complete their studies due to inadequate facility at the Barau Dikko Specialist Hospital.

The story is similar in Akwa Ibom State where the government constructed a State House with a sum of N16bn and a Banquet Hall with 500 seating capacity with the sum of N18bn. In other words, N34bn was spent on constructing a state house and banquet hall, according to the state Commissioner for Special Duties, Mr. Enobong Idem.

PUNCH investigations showed that the state government had not been funding the Akwa Ibom State University adequately.