‘In Nigeria, it’s 1 university to 1m people’

Saharaspy.com recently had a chat with the President of Accra Institute of Technology (AIT), Professor Clement Dzidonu. He clarified some misconceptions about Ghanaian tertiary institutions, and the need for Nigeria to build more universities to care for its growing population.

How did your journey into education sector begin?

My journey into education sector began in Ghana. I had my primary and secondary education in Ghana, while I did my bachelor degree in the United Kingdom. I have always wanted to be an academic and to teach at the tertiary level, but because I could not achieve that without having PhD, I started my PhD immediately after my bachelor’s degree. While doing my PhD, I was lucky to gain employment as a lecturer. That was how my sojourn into the academic world started.

What was the educational system like when you came back to Ghana from the UK?

The educational system was in a turbulent state when I came in the 1990s. That was the time a lot of Ghanaian lecturers migrated to Nigeria to teach. Even the late BBC broadcaster, Komlar Dumor’s father was a lecturer in Nigeria, while Komlar Dumor schooled in Jos. When I was doing my bachelor’s degree in UK, I was given a chance to tour Africa; that was in 1995-1996, the universities in Ghana were on strike for almost a year. But by the time I came back to Ghana finally, things had stabilised a bit. So, I started working with a private university. That was when private universities started springing up in Ghana. Then, we had only two private universities in Ghana.

How did the idea of Accra Institute of Technology (AIT) come up?

Before the idea of setting Accra Institute of Technology came up, I had known many professors and former vice chancellors who were into information technology, and they as well had their education in top notch universities abroad; that is why today, AIT board is made up of highly recognised professors in the academic world. The idea initially was to start PhD programmes, but later on, we agreed to run undergraduate programmes, and we tried as much as possible to module on top universities in the world, even though it would take time to get to the top. But we knew we had to walk in the footsteps of highly successful Informational Technology-focused universities in the world such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which is among the top five universities in the world, and this is the level at which we are focused on.

The plan to set up AIT started in 2005, but we started operating in 2009.

What will be your submission if you are to compare the standard of private universities in Ghana to Nigeria?

Well, I don’t know much about private universities in Nigeria, but my knowledge of Nigerian tertiary institutions was when I was involved in their accreditation monitoring process. It will be too early to compare Ghanaian universities to those of Nigeria. We have to give private universities in Ghana some time to mature before we can start comparing their standards and performances. So, I won’t want to compare private universities in Nigeria to those of Ghana. But the truth is Ghana and Nigeria both have sophisticated bases for higher learning.

I can as well say all Ghanaian public college universities can be compared to those of Nigeria. You need to have it at the back of your mind that private university education in Ghana is just 15 years old.

It will amaze you to know that there are more private universities in Ghana than Nigeria. Currently in Ghana, there are 15 public universities, 43 private universities and 10 polytechnics, giving us a total of 68 universities, with a population of 25 million. And the number of universities per capita is 2.72. In Nigeria’s case, Nigeria has 40 federal universities, 38 state universities, 51 private universities and 45 polytechnics. When you look at Nigeria’s population, having 51 private universities and Ghana with 43, you will realise that Ghana has more private universities that meets its growing population than Nigeria.

With the population of Nigeria, one would have expected that the number of private universities will be in the range of 100 or more. As it is now, the total number of tertiary institutions in Nigeria is 174 compared to Ghana’s 68. When you multiply Ghana’s 68 by two, the figure will be close to the total of Nigeria’s tertiary institutions figure. Looking at the size of the two countries’ population, it means, in terms of tertiary institutions size, Ghana is in a better position than Nigeria. In Nigeria, the number of universities per a million population is 1.08. That means one university per one million people.

Still, Ghana and Nigeria don’t have enough tertiary institutions to serve their growing population. So it is not a question of Ghanaian versus Nigerian tertiary institutions. The fact is, Ghana doesn’t have enough, Nigeria doesn’t have enough, but Ghana is still in a better position than Nigeria.

Unfortunately, our population growth is not going to pause nor stop and we already have more people who want to go to universities.

If we are to position the issue within the context of the data, our conclusion would be that we already have a problem of insufficient tertiary institutions. Unfortunately, there are no high class jobs that will request for SSCE as qualification. So, where do you want your children to go when you don’t set up more universities?

If Nigeria has more universities and less strike actions, I am sure Ghanaians will move to Nigeria. Ghana and Nigeria are like brothers. The last time, it was Ghanaians moving to Nigeria for jobs, now it is the turn of Nigerians migrating to Ghana.

The standard of these Ghanaian tertiary institutions has been an issue trending in Nigeria’s media. Will you say standard is a watchword for new private universities which Nigerians are trooping into in Ghana?

The issue of standard has always been the bone of contention with tertiary institutions, that’s why parents need to check out the tertiary institution they are sending their children to. But before you can say a country breeds substandard tertiary institutions, you must have assessed all of them. It will be very uneducated for anyone to say all universities in Nigeria are substandard. Even in Nigeria, you can’t say all universities are good or bad; that is the job of National Universities Commission (NUC) to check on universities and make sure they comply with certain standards. For your information we have standard universities in Ghana; though when you are in your early stages, the doubt might be there, but we should be given some time to grow. They may be young universities, they may have challenges, but you can’t question their standard because no university can operate in Ghana without the permission of National Accreditation Board of Ghana. The question we need to ask is: are these universities keeping to the standard? Are they accredited? In Ghana, universities that are not accredited cannot even advertise in the media. But I can confirm to you that the issue of standard in Ghana’s private universities is being looked at by National Accreditation Board, Ghana.

Currently, AIT doesn’t have a huge structure, which is expected of a university. When do you intend to match your academic success with a befitting structure?

We have a projection, we have a number of student intakes that we are not going to go beyond because we want to keep our quality with international standard. Second, we are not aiming for a mega university. We don’t intend to reach 10,000 students because we want to stand out as a top notch university.

Currently, our two structures at Cantonment and Sea View, both in Accra, can now accommodate all our students without difficulty. We have already secured another land we called ‘Knowledge City Campus’.

An IT focused university like us is not interested in building a town university like the University of Ibadan, University of Ghana and so on. Those are the universities of the old; too big, too huge. In the case where Nigeria needs more universities, how many of this kind of universities can they build looking at how far they need to go? Nigeria needs smaller, smarter but IT-oriented universities to meet its growing population of youths.