Don praises Tinubu’s students’ loan scheme for public universities
Vice Chancellor, University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), Prof. Charles Igwe has said the students’ loans scheme initiated by President Bola Tinubu will make public universities concentrate on their core mandate of learning and research.
Igwe, who spoke against the financial pressures, particularly on public tertiary institutions, to fund themselves through the generation of Internally Generated Revenue(IGR), insisted that universities were never established to raise money to run themselves and still engage in academics.
Fielding questions from reporters after being conducted around projects executed by his administration on the three campuses of the university, Igwe said the students’ loan scheme would enable the tertiary institutions perform their mandates without encumbrances on the students and the instructions.
The VC maintained that tertiary institutions were rather created for learning and research, adding that their finances were essentially conceived to emanate from endowments, grants, and other sources, but not to be financially self-sustaining.
“It was for the reason of the universities concentrating on their core philosophy that President Bola Tinubu opted for students’ loans.
“The university is a universal business. The university is not supposed to open a shop at Nsukka market and begin to raise funds just because it needs money.
“The business of the university is to teach, research, impact knowledge and do extension services. These are the basic mandates of every university worldwide. When we talk about IGR, sometimes they will say you are not farming, you are not producing pure water and bread.
“These things are distractions. I have attended universities in Europe, Asia and I’ve looked at how they manage issues.”
The VC added that one of the ways his administration had contributed to funding various projects was through international research grants.
“We make our staff work very hard in attracting international grants such as in my department, Soil Science, where we are able to get some equipment while working on my research. That is one of the ways academic staff get funds.
“But it’s not going to sell pure water and bread. This is not the kind of money that the university needs to conduct proper research and impact society. We are not talking about floating buses that will be running from Nsukka market and will be collecting N30 or N40.
“I’m happy that President Tinubu is talking about granting loans to university students. I just hope that they will also provide jobs for them so that when they finish, they will pay back these loans so that it can benefit others.
“One of the ways of attracting money to the university is by charging appropriate fees, but the last time I added N5,000 to the school fees, the students demonstrated. They said they didn’t know the VC was a Yahoo VC.
“What we get from the Federal Government every month is less than N15 million as overhead and the last time they brought it was in August and this is December and you pay electricity bill of more than N80 million and buy diesel as well. It’s from this so-called N90-something that students pay and N15,000 hostel fees that you take care of these things. Where does that lead you?”
The VC added that his administration inherited a total of 104 uncompleted projects but had completed 73 while the remaining were ongoing
