The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, has called for a structural overhaul in the management of university budgets, arguing that the National Universities Commission (NUC) should be solely responsible for handling the finances of public universities in addition to its regulatory functions.
Oloyede, who previously served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, made this assertion during an interview on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, aired on Channels Television.
He emphasized that university education is highly sensitive and should be administered by experts rather than being subject to political influence.
Oloyede criticized the current practice where individual universities lobby the National Assembly for budget approvals, stating that this system favors institutions based on their political connections rather than genuine educational needs.
NUC Should Oversee University Funding
“We can still re-engineer the situation to have the things we need. We need to look at the funding mechanism. The National Universities Commission (NUC), for example, should be left alone to run the universities. Hold the National Universities Commission responsible for the management of the universities,” Oloyede said.
He recalled his time as Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors, when the NUC was actively overseeing university budgets.
According to him, autonomy in universities would be better achieved if the NUC were allowed to coordinate funding and administration rather than letting each institution defend its budget separately before lawmakers.
“Now, every university goes to the National Assembly for their budget, for their defence, and the more you can pull the weight, the more will determine,” he added.
Data-Driven Budgeting for Universities
Oloyede noted that when the NUC managed university budgets, it relied on data-driven metrics, such as student enrollment per discipline, to allocate funding fairly. This approach ensured that resources were distributed based on actual needs rather than political lobbying.
“Whether you know anybody or you don’t does not come in. The NUC will determine the parameter number of students and so on. And it is the NUC that will defend at the National Assembly and the Ministry of Education,” he explained.
He lamented the decline in capital development funding, attributing it to the growing number of support staff in universities, which he believes has led to financial inefficiency.
Linking University Funding to Student Enrollment
Prof. Oloyede proposed an output-based funding model, where universities receive funding according to the number of students they train in each discipline.
“I believe that the way we are running and the way we are funding, it could get to a level that we will say: University of Abuja, you are producing XY medical doctors, what does it take to train one medical doctor? This is the quota we have given you. So, we now calculate (the amount). Both your capital and your recurrent expenditure won’t be our business. And we would have built research into it to ascertain the amount,” he said.
Nigeria Needs Better Universities, Not More Institutions
The JAMB Registrar also criticized the proliferation of new universities, arguing that instead of creating more institutions, the government should focus on expanding and equipping existing ones for better performance.
He pointed out a troubling trend where politicians establish new universities as a form of political compensation to marginalized communities, instead of setting up industries and factories that would create jobs and boost economic growth.
According to Oloyede, redirecting resources towards strengthening existing universities, improving infrastructure, and ensuring proper funding allocation would significantly enhance the quality of higher education in Nigeria.