-By Anietie Solomon Etteyit
There is a quiet administrative reality in Akwa Ibom State that deserves dispassionate interrogation. The same Ministry that supervises primary schools, secondary schools, technical colleges and adult education centres is also saddled with supervising universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. On paper, it works. In practice, it stretches capacity and blurs peculiarities.
This essay makes a case for a separate Ministry of Tertiary Education – not as a clamour for more bureaucracy, but as a demand for specialised governance.
Akwa Ibom State Has Enough Weight to Justify It
Akwa Ibom is no longer a state with one or two tertiary institutions. The state government owns and funds:
*Akwa Ibom State University, Ikot Akpaden
*Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic, Ikot Osurua
*Akwa Ibom State College of Education, Afaha Nsit [now University of Education]
*Akwa Ibom State College of Science and Technology, Nung Ukim
*Akwa Ibom State College of Nursing Sciences, with several campuses and main administrative location at Ikot Ekpene
*College of Health Technology, Etinan
*Civil Service Training Centre, Itak Ikono
When their satellite campuses, staff schools, workforce and student population are put together, we are talking about over 10,000 staff and possibly over 50,000 students. That is a sub-sector larger than many ministries. To manage that volume from the same desk that manages placement into JSS1 is to overstretch supervision.
Peculiar Needs Require Peculiar Supervision
A primary school needs classroom blocks and learning materials. A tertiary institution needs something else entirely: accreditation of over a hundred programmes at the same time, functional laboratories, workshops, studios, teaching hospitals, demonstration farms, Tertiary Education Trust Fund interventions, research grants, external examiner systems, and the delicate architecture of Senate, Academic Board and Governing Council.(TETFund)
These are not matters that can be handled with the same template used for regular schools. Accreditation alone is instructive. For universities, it is the National Universities Commission (NUC); for polytechnics, the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE); for colleges of education, the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE); and then professional bodies such as the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria [COREN], the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria (NMCN), the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and others.
A loss of accreditation means students cannot proceed for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) or professional certification. The preparation is technical, continuous and documentation-heavy. A generalist ministry burdened with over a thousand basic schools cannot give this the focused attention it requires. A dedicated ministry would have one core Key Performance Indicator (KPI) – that no programme in any state-owned institution loses accreditation on account of administrative lag.
Personnel Issues Are Fundamentally Different
Perhaps the most pressing reason is personnel. Staff in the mainstream civil service are on a salary dispensation called Consolidated Public Service Salary Structure (CONPSS) and operate under general public service rules. Staff in tertiary institutions operate under different conditions of service, including the Consolidated Tertiary Institutions Salary Structure (CONTISS) and the Consolidated Polytechnics and Colleges of Education Academic Staff Salary Structure (CONPCASS) with distinct allowances such as academic, hazard, responsibility and excess workload allowances, and distinct leave patterns such as sabbatical, study leave with pay and research leave. Promotion is not by Annual Performance Evaluation Report (APER) alone but by publications, exhibitions, conferences and years of research.
There are also distinct union structures – the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU), the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Polytechnics (SSANIP), the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU), the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP)- each with its own negotiation history and agreements.
When verification exercises or personnel audits concerning tertiary institutions are carried out by officers who have spent their entire career in the mainstream civil service, the result is predictable. Years of service are miscalculated, earned allowances are misunderstood, and academic progression is interpreted as civil service promotion. The exercise itself becomes a source of industrial disharmony and misery for countless officers in the tertiary institutions,who have to visit and answer questions from officers with little to no Idea of what they are asking about.
Verification exercises for tertiary institutions should be handled by people who are both experienced and sensitive – people who understand the system from within.
The Sabbatical Gap as an Illustration
One small but telling illustration is the processing of sabbatical leave.
Sabbatical enriches the academia. It allows for exchange of ideas, injection of fresh blood, cross-pollination of knowledge and data, and mentoring of younger academics. It is one of the finest traditions of the tertiary education system.
To the best of my limited knowledge, I am not aware of any personnel who have come to do sabbatical in Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic, Ikot Osurua in the last ten years. It is possible that this is the same situation with the erstwhile College of Education at Afaha Nsit.
Why? Partly because the process is not understood and not prioritised at the supervising level. A Ministry of Education that is busy with primary and secondary school enrolment figures and West African Examinations Council (WAEC) coordination has little time to process sabbatical requests, to create a database of sabbatical needs, or to market state institutions as sabbatical destinations. A Ministry of Tertiary Education, headed by people who have themselves benefited from sabbatical, would see sabbatical not as a favour but as a quality assurance mechanism. It would simplify approvals, create inter-institutional linkages, and make our campuses attractive for senior academics from other institutions to come, teach, research and leave behind capacity.
The absence of sabbatical intake in a decade in two major institutions is not a small matter. It is a symptom of supervision that does not fully understand (or is not allowed to engage meaningfully with) the ecosystem it supervises.
Different Salary Structures, Different Regulators
Beyond personnel, the policy environment is different. Tertiary education is regulated by agencies that do not regulate primary and secondary schools – National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND). Each has its own calendar, circulars and compliance templates. Interfacing with them requires specialised knowledge and continuity.(TETFund)
The salary structure itself – Consolidated Tertiary Institutions Salary Structure (CONTISS) and Consolidated Polytechnics and Colleges of Education Academic Staff Salary Structure (CONPCASS) versus Consolidated Public Service Salary Structure (CONPSS) – means that budget defence, wage bill computation and pension computation are different. To treat them as the same is to plan to fail.
Leadership Should Reflect Experience
The peculiar nature of these institutions requires that personnel at the top level should have experienced the system and can therefore relate well with those working in them. This is not an argument for exclusion, but for competence.
A Ministry of Tertiary Education would benefit greatly if its top layer – Commissioner, Permanent Secretary, Directors, and Boards and agencies overseeing the sector – are manned by experienced top-level serving or retired personnel from universities, polytechnics or colleges of education. People who have served as Vice Chancellor, Rector, Provost, Registrar, Bursar or Chief Librarian. People who know what accreditation means at midnight, what it means when a semester is disrupted, and what it means when earned allowance is delayed.
When a Rector has to explain the implication of Consolidated Tertiary Institutions Salary Structure (CONTISS) 15 Step 7 or the difference between academic and non-academic staff progression, to a desk officer who has never worked in a tertiary institution, communication breaks down. Expertise matters.
What Akwa Ibom State Stands to Gain
The gain is not in creating more offices. The gain is in efficiency. A focused ministry will ensure faster response to accreditation and Tertiary Education Trust Fund issues, fewer industrial crises arising from misunderstood conditions of service, better planning based on accurate tertiary-only data, improved competitiveness of state institutions in national rankings, and alignment with national best practices. Lagos, Oyo and Rivers States have found it useful to separate tertiary supervision for precisely these reasons.(TETFund)
The Agricultural Revolution, Rural Transformation, Infrastructure, Security and Education (ARISE) Agenda of Governor Umo Bassey Eno places emphasis on education as a foundation for human capital development. Tertiary education is where that capital is finally refined for the labour market. A Ministry of Education trying to manage basic education and tertiary education simultaneously is like a general hospital trying to function as a specialist hospital at the same time. It can be done, but not with the depth of excellence required.
Akwa Ibom has the number of institutions to warrant it. The system has experienced personnel to man it. What is needed is the structural will to create it.
A separate Ministry of Tertiary Education will not increase cost. It will increase clarity, empathy and expertise.
*****
The author is an experienced Tertiary school administrator and Development Communication scholar.
@highlight
@friends
