More on concession of Unity Colleges

Last week, we were engaged in the long-running controversy over the intended concession of King’s College, Lagos, one of the federal government unity colleges, to the old boys of the college to run and maintain. As I write today, dust has yet to settle over the matter. Admittedly, the reasons for the concession are glaring and indisputable. The 117-year-old iconic college is today only basking in its past glories. Infrastructural deterioration and declining academic standards are the result of years of government failure to attend to the college’s needs.

Though there is a general agreement that the concession will go ahead, and the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, has even made pronouncements to that effect, fresh pitfalls have so far been dug to block it. The Association of Senior Civil Servants (ASCSN) have been up in arms, despite assurances that jobs in the college will be safe and that there will be no arbitrary fee hikes. The ASCSN turned a deaf ear and proceeded to shut down the college. The members of the ASCSN, in their protest, expressed fears of job losses for its members and also said the new managers would hike fees and make the college inaccessible to ordinary Nigerians.

The ASCSN did not stop at shutting down King’s College; the protest escalated, spreading to all 112 unity colleges across the country and instructing students not to resume for the 2026/27 academic session. The association’s actions stem from fears that whatever happened at King’s College will likely spread to affect all unity colleges. Fortunately, the ASCSN has now suspended the strike following the minister’s gesture of postponing the concession for two weeks. The minister had set up a 7-man committee to review the concession agreement with the King’s College Old Boys Association (KCOBA), taking the concerns of ASCSN into consideration.

We hope that, all considered, the concession of King’s College, Lagos to its old boys will finally be laid to rest. Attention should then turn to the bulk of the unity colleges that had been in a similar state of dilapidation as King’s College, Lagos. Last week, I mentioned that the Oyo State Government’s concession of Government College, Ibadan, two years ago, to the old boys of the college to run and maintain is a success story worthy of emulation. However, my attention has been drawn to an even earlier successful concession made over a decade ago. Readers might recall Government College, Umuahia, one of those established in the regions by the colonial government of that era.

The college was established in 1929 and patterned after British public schools like Eton to provide first-class educational facilities for boys. For years, the college proved its mettle and proudly lists among those who passed through its gates: great novelist Chinua Achebe, dramatist and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, great poet Christopher Okigbo, great artist Ben Enwonwu, a general and chief of staff of the Biafran Army, Alexander A. Madiebo, Jaja Nwachukwu, Nigeria’s first Speaker of the House of Representatives and foreign minister, among others.

The college, like the others, had, over the years, been neglected by its government and had suffered infrastructural degradation and a decline in academic standards. In 2014, the Abia State Government came to an understanding with the old boys’ association of the college to form a joint trust to manage the college under a public-private partnership. So far, the partnership has helped transform the college over the last few years. They renovated and rebuilt dilapidated and old structures where possible. They cleared illegal structures and reclaimed the college perimeter. Massive investment was made in teacher recruitment and training. I understand that today the college can be considered to have risen from the ashes.

An often-neglected aspect of the debate over the ownership of unity schools is that the federal government should not run secondary schools. Under the Constitution, the federal government is responsible for tertiary education, while state and local governments handle primary and secondary schools. As Unity Schools have become an unsustainable burden on the federal government over the years, they could be handed over to state governments, which could decide what to do with them. This was brought to my attention by a colleague, Dr Mohammed Lawan Yahuza, who has for some years served as a director in the Federal Ministry of Education. His comments sent to my Facebook portal are below.

“The current budget for all federal government colleges, at some point in time, was more than the universities combined. Given the current reality and the paucity of funds available to universities, one cannot help but agree that the time has come to rethink the status of these federal secondary schools.

The constitution of a federation like our own clearly defines responsibilities as far as education is concerned. The federal government is clearly responsible for tertiary education, while the states and local governments are responsible for secondary and primary education, respectively.

Therefore, it is high time this constitutional responsibility is clearly implemented, and resources are applied prudently in a way that benefits the nation. It makes no sense for states to establish universities when their secondary schools are underfunded and dilapidated.

I support changing the policy on how to handle these matters.”