Dr Ife Oluwole, National Chairman, Association of Registrars of Nigerian Universities (ARNU) says poor funding and infrastructural deficit among other challenges have been the bane of Nigerian Universities.
Oluwole, Registrar of Ekiti State University, made the assertion in an interview with newsmen on Friday Shortly after the week long ARNU Worksop held at Federal University Lokoja (FUL), Kogi.
The chairman said funding and infrastructural development, training and retraining of staff are very key to the repositioning and transformation of our Universities’for global competitiveness.
“This more reason why ARNU hope to engage the National University Commission (NUC) for better funding and infrastructures for our Universities to be more conducive learning environment for our teeming youths.
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“I want to use this opportunity to appeal to the Federal Government to consider adequate funding of the system , which is going to be at the benefit of the Universities and the generality of the nation.
“This is simply because it’s the products of the Universities that will be the leaders of the nation tomorrow. And if you don’t train them very well it will bounce back on the nation at the end of the day.
“We decided to come together as Universities’ Registrars to deliberate on developments in the Universities and also discuss happenings within our University system, and as administrators, to find solutions to some problems that we have,” he said.
He said that because of the changing times, there were new challenges in the system, which “motivated us to organize this workshop so that we can discuss contemporary issues and finding ways of resolving them.”
According to him, some of the participants are from federal Universities’, State Universities and Private Universities which afforded them the opportunity of discussing problems individuals are encountering on the job.
“The advantage is that the experienced ones can advise the fresh incoming ones on how to handle the office.
“Just few days ago the federal government announced the establishment of 36 more Universities’, which means new Registrars are coming in and they need to be trained. Not only them, even those who are on the table (old ones) also need to be trained.
“We are seeing the workshop we just had as a way of training ourselves so that we can perform maximally and effectively on the job to the benefit of the university in Nigeria, ” he said.
“Unfortunately, the financing of the university system is very low, which explains why many of us are not here for the workshop.
“If you had looked well, you would have discovered that some of our colleagues could not be here because of the problem of funding, ” he said.
He however, thanked the Vice Chancellor, Prof Olayemi Akinwumi, the management and staff of Federal University Lokoja, for the warm reception accorded the ARNU during the one week workshop