“Glorified secondary schools” is the derisive term coined by Nigerians to describe their country’s universities. Classrooms are overcrowded, with many students sitting on the floor during lectures. Libraries lack books, and laboratories are ill-equipped to conduct experiments.
“It is not what it used to be in terms of facilities, in terms of teaching aids, in terms of infrastructures. It certainly has deteriorated quite considerably,” says Bola Fajemirokun, an environmental activist who graduated from the University of Lagos 20 years ago.
And, just as facilities are decaying, so is the quality of education being received by students.
“You find that people are coming out of universities, even supposedly with second degrees, and they simply cannot do the work they are required to do — for example, doing research,” observes Fajemirokun.
Add to this the fact that many of Nigeria’s brightest minds are leaving to take up positions overseas, and the prospects for local research look dimmer still. The end result, says Fajemirokun, is that policy formation in the West African state suffers because officials don’t have access to the information and insights that should inform their work.
“If you don’t have sufficient depth in terms of formulation, then you are going to have policies that cannot sufficiently address certain development problems,” she notes. “And so if there is some inadequacy in terms of people responsible for formulating policies, then you will definitely have that sort of gap between what is actually needed and what is being done.”
This conundrum came under discussion recently at a workshop held in Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos, by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), an independent think-tank based in Britain.
Similar events have taken place in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda and Ghana, under the auspices of the ODI’s civil society partnerships programme. Workshops are also being planned for Asia and Latin America.
The think-tank is using the seminars to examine factors that prevent non-governmental groups in developing countries from making greater use of research in their work — research that could imbue them with more authority when they try to influence policy makers.
“We are talking to donors and NGOs based in the north and also going round southern countries … bringing together civil society organisations … representatives of donor communities [and] policy communities to discuss these issues, and to learn more from them about what their particular needs are in different parts of the world,” said John Young, head of the ODI’s research and policy in development programme.
Part of the solution to the problem of inadequate research seems clear: spend more on universities and research institutions. Years of corrupt military dictatorship in Nigeria resulted in neglect of universities — and a host of other public institutions and utilities.
“I think research capacities have been reduced in many parts of the developing world because of a reduction in investments in universities,” Young noted on March 18, at the Lagos workshop.
“Until about 10 years ago, most of the research in the developing countries was done in universities and they have suffered severe funding cuts over the last decades.”
Added Fajemirokun: “It is undeniable that there has not been sufficient investment to support teaching and also to motivate committed professionals to come into the educational sector.”
But, the ODI believes that increased funding alone will not get civic groups to consult research findings more regularly — or effectively.
At one of the previous workshops, in Uganda, delegates noted that findings were sometimes disregarded because they bore little relevance to the most pressing issues confronting policymakers.
“I think helping the civil society research organisations to collect more relevant information and to interact more effectively with government is one part of the solution,” noted Young.
In instances where the research was relevant, policymakers were sometimes distrustful of the findings, and unlikely to incorporate them into new programmes.
Participates of the seminar in Uganda also noted that cumbersome presentation of research findings could stand in the way of their being acted on — and that civic groups sometimes lack the staff or expertise to make proper use of these findings.
Tari Asoka, a staffer from the Nigerian office of Britain’s Department for International Development, says the absence of local expertise on social issues has often meant that policies from other countries are imported to address social problems.
“What you find is lots of imported ideas — best practices elsewhere which tend to be implemented, and most times there is resistance when it comes to implementing them.”
In instances where NGOs do succeed in gathering and using local research findings, however, they can have a powerful influence on the government.
Sylvanus Abua of Development in Nigeria, an environmental NGO, cited a case in south-eastern Cross River state, where data collected by civil society groups succeeded in persuading the government to cancel a 10-year logging concession given to a Chinese company.
This represented a triumph for conservationists in the state, which contains more than half of Nigeria’s tropical rainforests.
“Through their research, the civil society organisations were able to convince the government that it was losing so much in taxes, and that logging was causing a lot of damage to the environment,” says Abua. The decision to cancel the concession was made in July 2004. — IPS