Namesake Olamilekan Adeola of Lagos West Senatorial district, who is now looking to snag the Ogun West Senatorial district seat from Senator Tolulope Odebiyi, needs to be reminded of a quip by author Chinua Achebe, “Those whose palm-kernels were cracked by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.”
If he has enjoyed the benevolence and indulgence of former Lagos State Governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, godfather and potentate of Lagos/South-West politics, to become a one-term member of the House of Representatives, two-term senator representing Lagos State and awaiting a third senatorial seat in Ogun State in 2023, he should remember how fortune has smiled on him.
Before Olamilekan acquired the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria professional certificate, he had attended the following public schools: State Primary School in Alimosho and Community Grammar School, Akowonjo, both in Lagos State, before attending not exactly prestigious Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, Ondo State.
In case Senator Solomon Olamilekan has forgotten the Solomonic admonitions of the bard of Stratford-on-Avon, William Shakespeare, on what the decent think of ingrate social-climbers, there is a reminder in the following paragraph:
“But ‘tis common proof, that lowliness is young ambition’s ladder, whereto the climber-upward turns his face; but when he once attains the upmost round, he then turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend.”
Lest Senator Olamilekan forgets his humble beginnings—from birth at Mercy Street Hospital, near Ita Faji Market on Lagos Island to his growing up in rural Alimosho in the 1970s—those who know his history should pull his ears.
Instead of speaking truth to the power held by retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari, who has amply demonstrated inadequate capacity to run an economy that will generate tax revenues to run government machinery and provide social services and infrastructure to the people, he chose to chase elusive shadows.
To avoid blaming Buhari’s regime for failure to address the more than seven months strike of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (as those of his political ilk always do), he veered into the silly retort that maybe government should no longer finance tertiary education.
His words, “It is high time for (the) Federal Government to stop the funding of Universities, to the extent of salaries or recurrent expenditure.” Then the mischief maker in him reared its head, and he said, “I think the Nigerian students should start asking questions, (like), ‘How do you spend money generated by the institutions?’”
His Ekiti State Senator, Abiodun Olujimi, “isongbe” or “elegbe,” Yoruba word for chorus or responder, went into wonderment as to how an educational institution is asking for more money than it generates.
Senator Olujimi took pleasure in upbraiding Registrar Mohamad Abdullahi, whose National Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies receives N8.5 billion annual subvention, after remitting only N35 million of its N410 million revenue to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
No one will disagree when she said, “Honestly, there is a need to look deeper into what this is about.” Incidentally, NBAIS employs 5,963 workers (that may or may not include ghost workers) to conduct examinations for only 1,000 candidates annually. That’s a drainpipe sinecure right there.
When you remember that Prof Ishaq Oloyede, the Islamic religious scholar, turned the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board from a leaking pipe to a robust revenue-generating agency, you would justifiably be angry with operators of government agencies, like Prof Abdullahi, who failed woefully in that regard.
During a meeting between the Senate Committee on Finance and revenue-generating agencies of the Federal Government, Senator Olamilekan wondered why universities that generate between N15 and N16 billion annually, have the conscience to ask the Federal Government to pay their staff salaries and pick up the tab for their recurrent and capital expenditures
He appears to have conveniently forgotten that the universities, a significant part of the education sector, are extremely labour-intensive. It, therefore, shouldn’t be a surprise that salary is the biggest single expenditure of the universities.
Ahmadu Bello University, University of Lagos and University of Ibadan, respectively received N22.67 billion, N14 billion and N17 billion allocations from the Federal Government budget in 2022. They respectively spent 92 per cent, 94 per cent and 95 per cent of these allocations to pay the salaries of all cadres of employees.
If Senator Olamilekan wants to get the universities to be self-funding, at least with regards to meeting salaries and other overhead expenses, he needs to get government to take a cold look at the following: First, is the need to fully grant tertiary institutions full autonomy, without government interference, as already promised.
Second, there is a need to review the government agencies that will be subjected to the policies of the Treasury Single Account, Procurement Act and Fiscal Responsibility Act, veritable tools of government meddlesomeness in the affairs of universities.
It is not as if these policies have no advantages. TSA ensures that government receipts go into the Consolidated Revenue Account before it can be spent by vouchering system prescribed by accounting principles.
Fiscal Responsibility Act, the policy introduced to achieve a balance between government earnings and expenditures, is expected to “compel any person or government to disclose information relating to public revenue and expenditure.”
The Public Procurement Act is expected to maximise economy and efficiency; promote competition and fairness in contract biddings; promote integrity of procurement procedures; and increase bidding transparency.
If anyone really wanted the universities to be autonomous, all they needed to do was to review all these statutes and policies and free the universities from the grip of their bureaucratic shackles.
And, in any case, the more mature economies that Senator Olamilekan and Isongbe Senator Olujimi may want to use as benchmarks, have robust grants, loans and scholarships for indigent university students.
By the way, one should ask what happened to the Students Loans Board whose headquarters office was located near the National Stadium at Alaka, in Surulere, Lagos, before the advent of this Fourth Republic that is failing to deliver dividends of democracy to hapless Nigerian citizens.
Anyone who has studied in America will tell you that state-owned tertiary institutions are generally cheaper than private institutions, like Ivy League universities. Yet students get government grants, loans and scholarships.
Instead of asking the government to take advantage of low-hanging revenue fruits, like preventing 500,000 barrels of petroleum stolen per day and get Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited to stop importing and start producing petroleum products locally, Senator Olamilekan acts as if the lecturers are the cause of the problem.
Apart from a half-hearted mention of the causes of the ASUU strike, Nigeria’s National Assembly, where Senator Olamilekan is a prominent member, has not made any meaningful suggestion to solve the problem.
Of course, with people like Senator Olamilekan as “pillars” of this warped, wonky democracy, you should not expect any serious-minded engagement on the vexed issue of the ASUU strike or any other issue for that matter.
Maybe you’ll recall that Senate President Ahmed Lawan, who will soon be shown the way out of the Senate doors by nemesis Bashir Machina, once promised that the Senate will support whatever President Buhari brings to them.
The crap coming out of Senator Olamilekan is just a confirmation of the institutionalised compromise promised by the Senate.
