Solomon Dalung, Minister of Youth and Sports Development has shown fear and concern that universities in Nigeria may start producing “Imams and Pastors” due to the fact that they offer courses outside what they are commissioned to do.
During the inauguration of the Governing Councils of 23 federal universities in the country, The 53-year-old spoke yesterday saying it was the decision of the Federal Executive Council that the universities should stick to their specialties.
Specialized institutions include universities of agriculture and the universities of technology.
Dalung said:
“I am a member of the Federal Executive Council and I stand with the decision and the wisdom of specialized universities limiting themselves to their core mandate. The laws creating these universities are very clear.
What business does the university of agriculture have in producing lawyers and accountants? If we are not careful, in future they will produce imams and pastors.
We have so many universities of agriculture that abandoned their specialty and they are producing accountants and mechanics, they will soon be producing footballers.
After carefully examining the laws that created these universities, the Federal Executive Council took this decision. We came to the decision that these universities should concentrate on their specialty.
It was not an arbitrary decision. It has broad consultation. The AGF was invited so I think what we did was the best for the country for now.”
Chairman, House Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFund, Suleiman Aminu, also spoke extensively on the decision of the government to ban general courses offered by specialized universities.
He said:
“Some persons must be cut out from our universities of Agriculture and Technology but I don’t believe that decision has received the best of consultations across the country. I said it because we have received serious petitions disagreeing with this decision of the government.
The world over, there are several universities of specialized fields that are actually not restricted to that particular discipline measure. We have met with the public, particularly those that are very informed on this issue.
We have met with the representatives of NUC, JAMB and the vice chancellors and we will invite more for us to benefit from their knowledge.
The laws establishing those institutions must be reviewed. If you go ahead and do it without actually changing the Act, there may be little problem. We are not against this change if it would benefit the system and Nigeria.
We can assure you of our spot as usual but where there are concerns I think particularly are where the laws that established these institutions do not have very clear mandate. I think the Federal Executive Council should make consultations”.