Read And Search Nigeria

The governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, speaking at a book presentation during the 80th birthday celebration of Prof. Adamu Baike, the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin, said that most states, local government and ministries in Nigeria are not economically viable and questioned the rationale behind the creation of more states and institutions.

Nigeria's Senate had also stated that most states in Nigeria are financially unhealthy and Sanusi's comments further buttressed the point.

The CBN governor also said that Nigeria needs to overhaul existing structures which make states spend about 96 percent of their resources on salaries and allowances for their workers.

In his paper titled "Re-invigorating education in Nigeria", Sanusi said, "Do we need 36 states? Do we need the number of ministries that we have? Is an economy where states spend 96 percent of their revenue paying civil servants an economy that is likely to grow in the long run? These are difficult questions that we need to ask.

"We have created states and local governments and ministries as structures that are economically unviable and the result is that we do not have funding for infrastructure, we do not have funding for education; we do not have funding for health."

"I don’t know how many people know that 70 percent of the revenue of the federal government is spent paying salaries and overhead; leaving the rest 30 percent for 150 million Nigerians."

"This means that no funds are left over for the provision of infrastructural facilities by the various tiers of government, and in an emerging economy like Nigeria, a well designed educational policy should be an integral part of its development strategy."

He also addressed the recent plans by the Federal government to establish nine new federal universities in Nigeria, saying "The recent decision of the federal government to establish nine additional universities will further increase the number of federal universities. It is not the place of the Central Bank Governor to comment on education policy. But one wonders the wisdom behind creating new universities when the ones we have built are still suffering from underfunding."

"Athough there isn't comprehensive data on the number of Nigerian students abroad, recent data has shown that there are about 71,000 Nigerian students in Ghana paying about N155 billion annually as tuition fees as against the annual budget of N121 billion for all federal universities."

"In other words, the tuition paid by Nigerian students studying in Ghana with a better organised system is more than the annual budget of all federal universities in the country. Nigeria is today placed third on the list of countries with the highest number of students studying overseas."