Bad Leadership Causes Universities to Fail - Ebonyi VC

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The Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Health Sciences David Umahi, Uburu, Ebonyi State, Prof. Jesse Uneke has blamed the failure of most public universities in the country on poor leadership.

According to Uneke, public universities are expected to perform better than private institutions due to government interventions and other things that come their way, reiterating, "Most of the problems in the country's universities are caused by poor leadership" .

He said this during a press briefing in the university lecture hall, Uburu, on Thursday.

he said, "A lot of universities have problems and problems, and most of the time people blame the federal government. That shouldn't be the case. Most of the problems in universities across the country are caused by poor leadership. This is very critical.

"If you go to a university and find that things are not going well, check the management. If the government gives you salaries, gives you capital projects and gives you recurring income; for the Love God, all you need is good leadership and management, the university wouldn't have any problems.

"That is the challenge we have. But I don't want to get into that. However, I want you to understand that the failure of some universities we have in Nigeria is not because the government is not doing its best; it is because of bad leadership.

"It's because if you go to some of the private universities in the country that are doing very well, it's not like they get more money than the federal universities; it's not like they were on the Higher Education Trust Fund. But how come things are better organized there than in the federal universities? It's not even like they all collect huge fees from the students. There are so many private universities that are very, very affordable, but it seems that things are better organized there. It's a question of leadership. But, we were able to take care of some of these things here and we don't we don't expect ours to be like that."

He pointed out that with the takeover of the institution by the federal government, the university is poised to deliver world-class educational services and training to its students and other stakeholders.

The University Don added, "In university administration, you can't compare in terms of funding what the federal government can do and what the state government can do. Of course, when the government federal government takes over an institution, it inherits all the assets and liabilities of that institution.

"And one of the things that the FG does is take over the funding of this institution. Funding has been a major factor when it comes to institutions like this. So the FG supports staff salaries, the FG supports investment projects, and the FG supports operating costs. And that's huge. That's pretty huge.

"Now we have changed from a state university to a federal university. And, currently, we now have a better chance of benefiting from capital projects, because TETFUND, which is a branch of the federal ministry of education, is there to look after tertiary institutions.This branch of the Federal Ministry of Education manages most of the ongoing capital projects in universities, including interventions of up to N3 billion per year. That's huge.

"A federal university benefits more from these interventions than state universities, even though state universities also benefit from these advantages. We intend to build our center of information technology and communications here and to set up other hostels. With funding from TETFUND, we can do this more easily."