From Ben Dunno, Warri
The Registrar of Nigeria Maritime University (NMU), Kurutie, Warri South West Local Government Area of Delta State, Dr Alfred Mulade, has attributed the current slow pace of growth in the institution to lack of sustainable funding and negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic that impeded on its take-off master plan.
Speaking while appraising the development of the university in the last three (3) years during an interview with Daily Sun at his office, Dr Mulade, acknowledged that although most tertiary institutions in the country today are faced with the same issue of inadequate funding, it was, however, more challenging in the case of NMU due to its difficult terrain.
He noted that while most schools operating at upland part of the county that receives the same allocation to carry out the same developmental projects like the university, spend reasonably on that project but when it comes to the same projects at hinterland, they spent three (3) times of what it cost those in uplands to get the same job done.
Dr Mulade also pointed out that the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic had its toll on the progress of the university as they lost so much time that would have placed the institution in an advanced stage if the impact of the global pandemics had not been there, especially during the 2019/2020 academic sessions.
According to him; “We are just at phase one of the university, we are supposed to have entered phase II but we can not enter phase two now, why? because there was the downtime between 2015 when the school took off and early 2018. I say downtime because nothing happened academically because the school was put on hold.
“Then, there was another downtime, this time due to the Corona Virus that started in 2019. All these things have eaten our take-off master plans and have contributed.in making it difficult for us to enter phase II of our developmental plans”
“The phase one of the university’s master plan would have brought in the faculty such as the Faculty of Law but we can’t do much about that now because we want to see that we consolidate on phase one of the master plan, so that is where we are at the moment,” he stated.
Commenting on the issue of funding, Dr Mulade said: “Yes, funding is an issue everywhere nationally. I will say everywhere because by the virtue of my position as a Registrar of Association of Nigeria Universities I know what the universities system is going through in terms of funding and that is why it has become necessary that since the Federal Government cannot provide all the funding for the universities to run, the schools are also encouraged to see how they can look inwards to generate alternative fundings.
“But in our own case here, the environment is a challenge. Look at the environment, look at the terrain, the hazards and all of that so if the upland is given a billion naira and we are also given a billion naira, the upland will achieve more, that is why we need much funding and that is why we are also spreading our tentacles, local content is doing something, Chevron is also doing something as well as other stakeholders to the university.
“Then, we also have our principal sponsor, I will say sponsor because the university was conceptualised by NIMASA and we were thinking that it would be a NIMASA property but the Nigeria University system has its own policy and going by the policy, NIMASA can not completely own the university as it stands today but they support the university. What we keep saying is that the support should be more so that we can do more.
“For instance, the permanent site was single-handedly awarded by NIMASA before the school was put on hold. So we want that kind of deliberate intervention from NIMASA so that things go on faster in the best interest of both the staff and students of the university.
“We are really in a hurry to meet up in some areas we are lagging behind, in order to be able to actualise our targets of ensuring that our workforce is adequately remunerated so as to bring out the best in them and also focuses more in providing quality and sound academic qualifications that would boost both the highly trained technical manpower and skilled labour in the maritime sector of the economy.
“So we need every stakeholder, not just NIMASA to make sure everything work together to be able to do what needed to be done for the school, for instance, the Delta state government, in spite of the fact that this is a federal institution, the state government state has done a lot by providing the initial take-off grant of a hundred million naira. Then, we have mentioned Okerenkoko campus support, then generators were provided and we still making more demands on the state government.
“We need more from the state government, we need more from NIMASA and we need more from all of our stakeholders.
“From NIMASA, we need a more deliberate steady means of support, something that is fixed, specific and then we say okay, we are getting this every month, we should be getting it every month, otherwise, we would continue to get stranded when such fundings are no longer available.”