Oyewole O. Sarumi
As a consultant who has navigated the murky, complex, and often frustrating waters of the Nigerian education economy and its broader ecosystem for over four decades, I have seen policies come, go, and recycle themselves under different acronyms.
I have sat in boardrooms with Vice-Chancellors, debated with successive Ministers of Education, and analyzed the endless push-and-pull between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government. If there is one recurring theme that dominates the discourse surrounding Nigerian public universities, it is the cry of "underfunding."
However, after reviewing the recent socio-economic shifts, evaluating the ongoing interventions by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), and analyzing the glaring disparity in endowment funds between our institutions and their African peers, a different, more uncomfortable truth emerges. Yes, the lack of full institutional autonomy has historically been a legitimate bottleneck. But when we look at the university ecosystem holistically, the Senate and management of these institutions have always had access to, or the potential to access, massive financial resources.
Methinks the foundational cancer destroying our ivory towers is not merely a lack of funds; it is a profound lack of responsive, visionary, and accountable leadership.
What we are witnessing today is a university system that has abandoned its core mandate of intellectual innovation, choosing instead to operate like a bloated parastatal of the civil service. Worse still, the political rot that has characterized our broader national development has violently seeped into the very fabric of our academic leadership. When professors, who should be the ultimate moral compasses of our society, are caught colluding with politicians to rig elections, we must face the reality that our universities are suffering from a deficit of character just as much as a deficit of cash.
In this comprehensive review, I will dissect the two major pillars of university financing, government interventions (TETFund) and independent revenue generation (Endowment Funds), to expose how poor leadership, political compromise, and a lack of innovative thinking have kept Nigerian universities perpetually on their knees.
TETFund Interventions: Pouring Water into a Leaking Basket?
For years, the narrative peddled by university administrators is that government has abandoned public tertiary education. While there is truth to the assertion that our national budget allocation to education consistently falls short of the UNESCO recommendation, it is intellectually dishonest to ignore the trillions of Naira that have been pumped into these institutions via TETFund.
The recent move by ASUU to scrutinize the management of these funds by Vice-Chancellors is not just timely; it is a damning indictment of the university management class. ASUU President, Prof. Chris Piwuna, recently noted that the union has observed severe lapses in the supervision and utilization of TETFund interventions. He rightfully pointed out that while significant funding has been provided, the execution leaves much to be desired.
“Yes, there has been significant funding provided to universities in recent years. However, it is important to ensure that such funds are effectively utilized for the purposes they were intended.” — Prof. Chris Piwuna, ASUU President
Consider the TETFund Centres of Excellence. These are supposed to be specialized hubs of research and development, designed to solve specific national problems ranging from agricultural yield to renewable energy and public health. Instead, as my decades of consulting have revealed, many of these centers operate as glorified administrative offices. Prof. Piwuna expressed similar concerns, noting that these centers are not delivering outcomes commensurate with the massive financial investments poured into them. When the government recently added six new Centres of Excellence to the existing 30, it only highlighted the urgent need for a forensic audit of the older ones. What patents have they produced? What commercialized research has been birthed from these hubs?
The Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, has backed ASUU’s call for accountability, emphasizing the need for stronger oversight mechanisms. But why should a university need external policing to manage funds designed for its own growth? The answer lies in the systemic corruption that has turned Vice-Chancellorships into lucrative political appointments rather than academic stewardships. In many institutions, TETFund projects are treated as avenues for contract kickbacks, inflated procurement, and patronage. Buildings are erected with substandard materials, and high-end laboratory equipment is purchased but left to rot in crates because no provision was made for the training required to operate them or the continuous power supply needed to maintain them.
The Senate and management of our universities have total control over the conceptualization of these TETFund proposals. If the resulting projects are dead on arrival or fail to add tangible value to the university's global ranking, it is a direct failure of internal leadership, not a failure of federal appropriation.
The Endowment Embarrassment: UCT’s N441 Billion vs. Nigeria’s N6.8 Billion
If the mismanagement of TETFund allocations is frustrating, the absolute failure of Nigerian universities to build and sustain alternative funding sources is deeply embarrassing. A recent analysis laid bare a staggering disparity: the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa boasts an endowment fund valued at N441 billion ($318 million). In stark contrast, the combined endowment funds of eight premier Nigerian public institutions, including UNILAG, UNIBEN, UNIJOS, YABATECH, and FUTO, amounts to a paltry N6.8 billion ($4.3 million).
Let that sink in. A single university in South Africa has an endowment fund 64 times larger than the combined endowments of eight of Nigeria's most populated and historically significant universities. Even the University of Cape Coast in neighboring Ghana sits on an endowment of 5.7 billion Ghanaian cedis (roughly N740 billion).
How did the "Giant of Africa" get here?
An endowment fund is not simply a savings account; it is a pool of donated capital from alumni, philanthropists, and corporate partners that is invested in perpetuity. The principal remains untouched, while the investment returns are used to fund operations, scholarships, professorial chairs, and cutting-edge research. It is the financial bedrock of every globally competitive university, from Harvard to Oxford, and evidently, to UCT.
In Nigeria, university administrators have historically blamed their inability to build these funds on a lack of financial autonomy. They argued that policies like the Treasury Single Account (TSA) forced them to pool all revenues into a central government vortex, discouraging private donors who feared their money would be swallowed by federal bureaucracy. This was a legitimate grievance.
However, in September 2024, the Federal Government, through the National Universities Commission (NUC), finally granted universities and research institutions the autonomy to operate their endowment fund accounts in commercial banks, exempting them from the TSA. Yet, as we progress deeper into 2026, the needle has barely moved. Why? Because you cannot legislate trust, and you cannot mandate innovation.
James Nnanyelugo, the Chief Operating Officer of EDUCARE, hit the nail on the head when he described the contrast as striking but not surprising. He rightly points out that the issue is not just about a "weak private sector," as some activists claim, but about deep structural flaws in fundraising, governance, and alumni relations.
"Firstly, donors want accountability, transparency, and impact, and many Nigerian institutions struggle in these areas due to inconsistent leadership, poor audit cultures, and opaque financial practices... The disparity between UCT and Nigerian universities isn’t just about money — it’s about vision, structure, and long-term planning." — James Nnanyelugo, COO, EDUCARE
Donors, whether they are wealthy alumni or multinational corporations, do not throw money into black holes. They invest in visionary leadership. When a Nigerian university cannot even publish its annual financial records online (out of 203 federal institutions, only eight had published their endowment funds as required by transparency laws), why would a corporate entity entrust them with billions of Naira?
Furthermore, our universities treat their alumni networks with shocking disdain. In my years of consulting, I have seen that Nigerian universities only remember their alumni when they are building a new gate or need a quick donation for a convocation ceremony. There are no structured alumni development programs, no robust databases tracking the career trajectories of graduates, and no continuous engagement strategies. We are sitting on goldmines, our alumni are leading global tech firms, heading international banks, and running massive conglomerates, yet our universities remain aggressively poor by choice.
The Politicization of the Ivory Tower: When Scholars Become Riggers
We cannot discuss the financial and structural decay of our universities without addressing the elephant in the room: the total collapse of moral leadership among the professorial cadre. In the past, the university campus was a sacred space, insulated from the gritty, transactional politics of the outside world. Today, the political development in the country has disastrously seeped into our institutions.
Instead of using their positions to distinguish themselves as scholars of repute and lead exemplary lives, a highly visible subset of our professors has chosen the path of political thuggery. The most glaring example of this is the role some academics have played as election returning officers for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Rather than serving as neutral, incorruptible arbiters of the democratic process, several professors have been caught red-handed colluding with political parties to rig elections for the highest bidder. This is not mere speculation; it is documented, judicial fact. For example, we witnessed the disgraceful convictions of university professors in Akwa Ibom State, such as Professor Peter Ogban and Professor Ignatius Uduk of the University of Uyo, who were sentenced to prison for electoral fraud and manipulation of election results.
It is unheard of in sane climes for the intellectual elite to be the foot soldiers of electoral subversion, but it is happening right here. When the very individuals entrusted with molding the minds of the next generation, managing billion-Naira TETFund allocations, and charting the strategic vision of our universities are found guilty of forging election results, how can we expect them to run a transparent endowment fund?
This moral bankruptcy directly impacts university funding. If a Vice-Chancellor or a senior Senate member is viewed by the public and the corporate world as a compromised political operative, the institution loses its most valuable currency: institutional integrity. A corrupt academic leadership will inevitably run a corrupt university. They will favor mediocrity over merit in staff appointments, they will manipulate procurement processes for research grants, and they will alienate the very private-sector partners they desperately need for financial survival.
It is a massive relief that ASUU has finally decided to look inward and investigate this corruption among its own members. For decades, ASUU has focused its ire exclusively on the Federal Government. While the government deserves its share of the blame, ASUU's decision to probe the VCs and its own members is a watershed moment. We can only hope that the findings of these internal investigations will be made public for rigorous scrutiny. The ivory tower must cleanse itself before it can demand respect, and funding, from the outside world.
Escaping the Allocation Mentality: A Paradigm Shift for University Leadership
As Dr. Sylvanus Ugoh, ASUU Chairman for the University of Abuja Chapter, nostalgically recalled, there was a time when Nigerian higher institutions attracted international students and lecturers from across the globe. Today, the reverse is the case. We are hemorrhaging our brightest minds to the West because our universities cannot provide a conducive environment for cutting-edge research or a decent standard of living for academics.
But returning to those glory days requires our university leadership to completely abandon the "allocation mentality." They must transition from being administrators of government stipends to becoming dynamic CEOs of intellectual enterprises. Based on my four decades of analyzing this ecosystem, here is the blueprint our university Senates and Management must immediately adopt:
★Professionalize Fundraising and Endowment Management: Universities can no longer rely on ad-hoc committees of lecturers to raise funds. They must establish dedicated, professional Development Offices staffed by experts in corporate fundraising, wealth management, and donor relations. These offices must run independently of the university's academic politics, guided by strict, globally recognized financial auditing standards.
★Establish Independent Endowment Boards: To cure the trust deficit, endowment funds must be managed by independent boards of trustees composed of respected alumni, corporate leaders, and financial experts—not just political appointees and university staff. This ensures that the funds are insulated from the administrative turnover of Vice-Chancellors and are invested purely for maximum yield.
★Aggressive Alumni Data Mining and Engagement: Universities must invest heavily in data architecture. You cannot solicit funds from people you cannot locate. Institutions must build interactive digital platforms that offer lifelong value to alumni, such as access to university libraries, networking events, and continuous education certificates, before asking them for a dime. Giving should be the natural result of a lifelong relationship, not a shakedown.
★Commercialization of Research and University Assets: Public universities sit on thousands of hectares of prime real estate. They possess laboratories, agricultural lands, and technical expertise. Why are universities not establishing robust consulting arms? Why are engineering faculties not bidding for state infrastructure contracts? Why are agricultural departments not operating massive commercial farms to feed their host states? The intellectual property generated by postgraduate research must be patented and licensed to the private sector.
★Radical Transparency and Accountability: Every university must publish a comprehensive, audited financial report on its website annually. Donors must be able to see exactly how much was raised, how the principal is invested, and the specific impact of the yield. If a corporate body donates a laboratory, there must be a public tracker showing the maintenance schedule and the research output of that facility.
CONCLUSION
The narrative that Nigerian public universities are failing simply because the government is starving them of funds is a convenient half-truth. It is a shield used by university administrators to deflect from their own lack of vision, their administrative lethargy, and in some tragic cases, their outright corruption.
While the Federal Government must undoubtedly improve its budgetary allocations to education and maintain the momentum of TETFund interventions, the ultimate salvation of our ivory towers lies within. The stark contrast between the University of Cape Town’s N441 billion endowment and the combined N6.8 billion of our top eight universities is not a measure of national wealth; it is a measure of institutional competence.
Our universities have the human capital, the alumni networks, and now, the regulatory autonomy to build massive, sustainable financial reserves.
What they lack is responsive leadership. Until we drive out the political contractors masquerading as professors, until we demand absolute transparency in the utilization of both public interventions and private donations, and until our Vice-Chancellors begin to think like global innovators rather than local civil servants, our universities will remain shadows of what they were destined to be. The time for pointing fingers at Abuja is over; the time for internal accountability has begun.
(Prof. Sarumi, a leadership and digital transformation architect, write from Lagos)
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