The Academic Staff Union of Universities has decried the neglect of the education sector, saying Nigeria ranks lowest in education budgets across the West African sub-region.
“We have done survey of West African countries. The least budgetary allocation to education by any country in West Africa is 15 per cent. The highest is 32 per cent. Osodeke berated many universities’ vice chancellors for their failure to carry necessary stakeholders along in the utilisation of TetFund allocations to their schools.“But, you remember that when you were allocating money to university VCs, we agreed that they would call stakeholder meetings before that money is utilised.
Echono said that funding must also be directed at essential programmes that align with the strategic objectives in terms of the outcomes of investment in either physical or content development that the funding usually supports. The executive secretary noted that new programmes and intervention lines were introduced, and some innovation or alterations were carried out regarding some existing ones, adding that, where necessary, non-performing ones were dropped.