It is sad that once again a Nigerian who ought to be a responsible mentor for Nigerian youths has towed the unfortunate path of Ignorance. In his recent music video, Falz called out Nigerian Churches for building universities with money of the poor yet made it unavailable for the poor due to “expensive” tuition.
This is one of the numerous emotional blackmail that churches in Nigeria are being subjected to. It is sad because one wonders if much of these accusers even realize what it takes to fund a mediocre university not to talk of a good one. In much of these debates and attacks against churches, most seem to abandon the facts rather they go feed on the lies and propaganda against the church which is an easy target because most churches rightly do not have PR teams or many individuals knowledgeable enough to defend them.
How Much Does It Cost To Run A Nigerian University
We would be using federal and state universities as a guide here due to the unavailability of data from mission universities.
In their underfunded states, the University of Ibadan’s annual wage bill stands at 800 million naira/month translating to 10 billion naira/annum. Capital allocation to the university also stands at 1 billion naira/annum. While Tetfund’s annual allocation stands at 2 billion naira per annum. Therefore all FG induced funding stands at 13 billion naira for a total number of 29,783 students which put total FG subsidy of UI at N437,000.00 per annum. This is excluding the IGR made by the university.
State universities on the other hand have a typical wage bill profile of about 5 billion a year. Example would be the likes of Lautech and EkSu with 390> million naira and 450 million naira as wage bill respectively.
If Governments are finding it hard to fund universities how would fahlz expect churches to do so exclusively?
Until recently Lautech was enmeshed in a series of Industrial actions which was a result of the two owner state’s inability to pay subvention for the university. Adekunle Ajasin on the other hand witnessed an internal crisis when state government had to hike the fees students where paying. All these are testament to the fact that university education is severely expensive to fund. So the intelligent questions that Falz should be asking is how state governments funded with Oil revenue, Compulsory Tax and a predictable income regime are finding it nearly impossible to properly fund single universities across their various states. Not why should churches who are funded by voluntary donations and a non consistent income regime must fund free education.
There Are No Free Church Universities Anywhere In The World
While most of the advocates of free church university education are quick to cite old missionaries as the reason why today’s church must give free education it is curious as to why they refuse to cite free church universities in advanced nations of the world today which currently practices free education. They cunningly make it sound as though tuition fees was invented by Nigerian pastors. But it is indeed far from the truth. The fact is that majority of the conventional churches across the globe funded or founded by churches charge way higher than their counterparts in Nigerian universities. Exceptions would be made of university cum seminaries which are usually also funded by churches.
“Church Universities Are Funded By The Poor” – A lie invented by Mischievous individuals
Half truths are equal to lies, to say that church universities are funded by the poor is to insinuate that they are exclusively funded by them. But that would be a lie because the obvious truth is that they are equally funded by the rich and middle class who in some cases don’t even bother applying. Much of these self appointed advocates of the poor are in the reality hypocrites using poor people as a pawn in a dirty war game against the church.
University education is expensive everywhere and where it is free someone must be paying for it. Many of the hypocritical advocates of the poor make it seem as though poor people sell off their inheritances to gift to churches so as to build schools “that are for the rich”. But in reality what most church members give to churches or university donations are negligible funds such as 50 – 500 naira. How many 50/100 naira notes are you going to pull together to replace one 800,000 required to educate one kid?
Nigerian Churches Should Continue Their Good works In The Higher Education Sector And Ignore Detractors
The fact of the matter is that Nigerian churches provided over 30 universities which has given thousands of Nigerian youths the opportunity to study in a country with one of the lowest university per populations in the world. They’ve done that and have equally saved Nigeria millions in foreign exchange which erstwhile was lost to education tourism.
They’ve funded researches in millions, owned research institutes which helped in curbing infectious disease and now even one now has a startup laboratory.
